Take to the Skies
by We'reAllABitOdd
Summary: Ichigo is used to odd things, to say the least. This is just another one, sure it's a terrible one but it's just another one - right? It's not like the kids involved are innocent - oh wait, that's exactly what they are. He was meant to protect and protect he will, even if he has to hurt - even kill - the monsters that are tearing everything apart.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N So, I'm being just going to start another fic for the sake of having one that does not include harry Potter- my mind needs a break sometimes and this is a god way to do that. This fic is really only being written for me but, should someone stumble across this and actually enjoy it, that's incredible! If such is the case, I would like to clarify that I am going to have to age down Ichigo slightly so he can be he same age as Max, fang and Iggy, meaning the events happened earlier in his life. Also, yes there will be a fair bit of AU-ing done with the Maximum Ride. Without further ado, I shall disclaim and begin this fic! ~We'reAllABitOdd**

 **I neither own nor claim to own any of the franchises used or referenced in this fanfiction - it is exactly that:** ** _fanfiction._** **Bleach and Maximum Ride are the intellectual property of Tite Kubo and James Patterson respectively.**

Angel was hunched in her cage, watching as the days she observed melded together much like the myriad of thoughts that she allowed to fill her mind and overtake the dead silence that she would otherwise have to endure. Of course, that's not to say the things that she heard were pleasant. Kids cried, even in their minds, lamenting and yelling out in pain. They wished for death and prayed to their god(s) to save them from this hell, to no let them see another child die in front of their eyes, to let the whole thing be a dream. What was worse was the way that many begged for their families to come and save them because these children hadn't been born into the hell she and her flock had never known any alternative to, these children had lived normal childhoods with loving families and friends. They were once normal but had since become destined to die in the School - a place akin to the underworld so many had grown up dreading being damned to.

No one spoke, she didn't know if they actually _could_ any longer. Instead, the only noise to be heard outside of the confines of her mind was heavy, laboured breathing, groans of pain and the occasional squeak of a cage should someone be able to muster up enough strength to move. It was a terrifyingly regular occurrence; watching what little light was left in one of the kid's eyes fade and their struggle to breathe abruptly given up on. There was a girl in the cage to the left of her own, slumped in the pose death had caused her to take, dark skin still tinted red where rows of stitches and scaring decorated it, the tail grafted roughly to her spin a bloody mess and her eyes, catlike and blank, suspended open, rimmed with red and bloodshot.

This is what the School did. They tampered with lives, they tore things apart: families, people. They were murderers, kidnappers, demons who escaped their own punishment and assigned it to those who were innocent – or, at least, more so than themselves.

Then the doors had opened, erasers stormed in, a half-conscious boy suspended between them, head bowed and unable to struggle due to his sedated state. One eraser broke away from the group and dragged the poor, deceased cat-girl from her cage, roughly throwing the boy in as there were no spare cages at all – the sheer number of times they had tried to play God was astounding and disgusting.

The boy was quite old, at least to have been part of the series of sick twisted experiments, and interesting even if she to overlook the alterations made by the School. She couldn't help but be reminded ever so slightly of Iggy, a member of the flock she hadn't seen n so long and could only hope she would see again, they didn't look particularly alike but they had the same build, lanky and clearly not built to be bundled in the cages both had found themselves in. Also, it appeared as though the two were a similar age.

She had stared at the boy, the movement of his torso, his traffic cone-orange hair, as he lay folded in on himself next to her. But something struck her as odd, beyond it, even.

She couldn't hear his thoughts; his mind was locked from the inside. He was alive still, the slightly unsteady rise and fall of his chest and subtle movement of his long legs every so often was enough to assure her of such. It just didn't make sense. She didn't know whether the boy was forcing her out, strong enough even at a time when he lacked consciousness to protect his mind from intruders he surely couldn't have known were there, or whether there was something wrong with his mind, or perhaps just different, that acted as a barrier at all times even if he didn't want it to.

He didn't look like the others, he didn't look like a failed experiment that had been kept alive only out of inhumane cruelty. He looked like he should have, a strong, healthy teenage boy. Of course, that was only if she overlooked one _very_ major detail.

There were wings folded along his bare back, folded alongside his shoulder blades, hiding most of his body from her view. From what little she could see in the dim lighting, the wings were dark, grafted onto the boy's back so seamlessly she had a hard time believing he hadn't been born with them. But then there was the blood. He didn't appear injured, there wasn't a single cut or scratch in sight but there was blood painting his skin and becoming matted, barely visible due to their deep hue, into his feathers.

Eventually, as her eyes grew heavy, she fell asleep herself, pre-emptively dreading the next morning's routine body count. She was a child herself, nine years old and living a life she wasn't quite sure qualified as one.

The next morning came but the body count never did: Angel was distracted. The boy in the cage next to hers was awake before her, he had shaken off what she knew from prior experience was a large dosage of an incredibly powerful sedative as if it were nothing. He was sitting with his back to her, wings just touching the cold, steel bars, still folded on his back.

His orange hair was messier than it had been the night before and fell around his shoulders in uneven strands that suggested he hadn't had the chance to have it cut in a while. His long legs were tucked up to his chest, his elbows rested upon them and his chin sitting where his arms overlapped each other. His shins were pressed against the bars in front of them, his head, despite being hunched over, brushing the bars above it.

She could hear his breathing, distinctly even, settled, amongst a room where she had previously been the only one not fighting to inhale. He was watching just like she was, watching the children and teenagers that were laying on the floor of the cages they had been forcefully placed in, cramped in the small enclosures and either fighting for life or waiting until it escaped them.

They were beyond saving, they may as well have been dead already – at most they had a week or two left. She watched, intrigued by the way he appeared to know that as well as she did despite the fact that he was not used to the same things as she was.

He seemed to realise he was no longer the only one awake amidst the experiments in the room and, with a great struggle, he turned so he was facing her: the only other one in the room with whom he could hope to uphold an intelligible conversation. He wasn't unfamiliar with bad situations but he was still in need of answers. The little blonde girl with the wide, blue eyes and steady breath that at least indicted she wasn't nearly as close to either death or madness as the other poor children in the room.

To his surprise and her own, she was the first to speak "Do you have a name?" she could feel her ripping at her dry throat and hear just how hoarse the disuse had caused it to become. It was quiet and she wasn't quite sure why, whether it was the atmosphere or the simple fact that she _couldn't_ raise it. "I'm Angel."

The boy prepared himself to sound even worse than the girl, Angel, had; he had just woken up from a drug-induced sleep he had no idea how long he had been trapped in and was preparing to use his voice for the first time since, not even in his own language. "Ichigo."

Angel observed Ichigo now that she could see him properly, though not before trying once again to invade his mind to assess whether he would be a threat to her and her flock. Once again, she was met with a solid wall of black energy that prevented her from venturing in. Scars littered his skin but they didn't seem to be the work of the School – each one of them appeared old and accidental, not like the new, surgical scars she would have found if the institute they had the misfortune of being trapped in had inflicted them. He was muscular and had clearly been strong long before the School took him in, however that offered no explanation as to how the experiment had succeeded and he had escaped with his life, sanity and will to live.

Looking at his face, her heart felt another pang. The expression he wore, the permanent scowl that had been maintained even in his groggy state of partial consciousness the night before, the eyes that were narrowed and untrusting (not to her specifically, however – it felt more like scepticism than anything) the way he held himself as if he were permanently ready to retaliate to an attack. He reminded her of Fang just enough to increase the degree to which she missed him, much as he had done with Iggy the night before.

Impatiently, he ran a hand through his tangled hair and focused his amber eyes on her. His other hand was nervously tucked into the pocket of his black jeans, appearing to be clasped around something. "Angel, just, where are we? Why do we have wings and why do these monsters seem to think that _this,"_ he waved a tan hand around the room to emphasise the things happening around them, the things very worthy of the disgust he treated them with "Is okay?"

She sighed slightly before giving Ichigo an answer. "We call this the School. They specialise in human/animal experiments in which they cross the DNA to create hybrids. They used to only do this before we were born, I was born with these wings, as was my flock, but recently they've started to kidnap people," Ichigo looked down, obviously already hyperaware of this as it had been what happened to him "They want to create more of us, more successful hybrids. I think, of those kidnapped, you've been their first and only success."

It was his turn to sigh. He did so heavily, accompanied by placing his thumb and index finger on either side of his noise, squeezing tight enough she was sure I would hurt. He shoved back his hair again. "Great. Monsters, more shitty monsters? I just don't get a break, do I?" He was mumbling to himself and Angel didn't question what he was mumbling about.

"Wait!" he exclaimed his epiphany, voice louder than before but still quiet and fairly flat, all things considered, and gravelly "You said something about a flock. Who are they?"

"Friends. They're the same as me. They're on the outside. Hopefully they'll come to save us – they should but the security has gotten better."

"You've escaped before."

"yeah but it'll be harder this time. We'll need outside help."

He hummed a soft response before lapsing into silence. She was left to ponder his words. The accent he had spoken in was interesting but not the most interesting thing she had been able to gather from the situation. He was too calm. He had lived outside of the School for most of his life. No normal person would take to such a situation so well, in all honestly, she was aware that no normal human would have survived as he did. Even if they did survive, and it would've had to have been on a sheer will not to die, they wouldn't be alive. They would have been like all the others: sitting on death's doorstep.

Just as she pondered her new acquaintance, as she realised just how scary he was – she could not see his thoughts and he seemed to be accustomed to dire situations, not to mention the very fact that he was alive – she heard a loud bang. Clearly, she wasn't the only one. Ichigo's head quickly snapped to face the direction of the explosion and he shut his eyes for a moment. Then he snapped them open. She watched his pupils dilate for a moment before he spoke "There are two people coming this way. They aren't erasers and I don't think that they're whit jackets, either."

I took all she had not to question relentlessly how he knew that. How ever he did, he had allowed her to know exactly what was happening. There were two people, the very number he had specified, that she associated very fondly with explosions. That bang very quickly proved itself to be just that and the people just who she expected when, with another tremendous bang and a loud clatter of falling rubble, the wall exploded.

The clatter was followed by footsteps and two boys came rushing in through the new hole in the wall. One was tall and skinny, with pale skin, light hair and a splattering of freckles accompanied by equally pale eyes, blue and glazed over, unseeing. The other was shorter and younger. In fact, he bore quite the resemblance to Angel herself. He had the same big, blue eyes and blonde hair – granted, his was far messier and generously coated in debris from the series of explosions that had reverberated through the very depths of the building.

"Angel!" the younger called, drawing his sister's attention easily.

"Gazzy! Iggy!" The older of the two turned to her as he heard his name, walking over to the source of the noise and fumbling for the lock of the cage. It took a minute but he found it and began to work on undoing it. "Gazzy, the boy in the cage next to mine – get him out. Please." At last, she stepped out of her own cage, leaning and twisting to stretch out her cramping muscles, listening to the popping of her bones that accompanied every movement she made.

He looked at his sister curiously as he did, small hands unlocking the door. Ichigo stepped out, long limbs creaking unpleasantly just like Angel's own. Gazzy took a minute to look at him as he aimed to stretch the soreness out of his muscles.

"Do you not own a shirt?" he deadpanned, watching the boy stretch, his myriad of scars rolling with his movements.

"Technically, yes. But I don't have one with me, the whitecoats tore the one that I was wearing when they grafted these," he turned and twitched one of the dark appendages "Onto my back. Anyway, shouldn't we be going? The erasers are coming!"

"He's right, I can hear them!" Iggy confirmed, stretching his enhanced hearing sense to its limit. What he didn't mention was the act that he could hardly hear them coming and his ears had become more sensitive due to the loss of his sight.

In a quick sprint that all four had taken to straight from being stationary despite the stiffness of two, they fled. The walls of the institute were industrial, made of thick, white stone that had been scattered all over the once sterile, white floor tiles. They ran through the great, gaping holes left by the boy's make-shift bombs. The blaring lights that filled some of the rooms were such a shift from the perpetual darkness of the one that they had grown used to that they were forced to squeeze their eyes shut to block them out. As such, they didn't get a chance to look at each other properly and had to rely on their hearing and Gazzy and Iggy's capability to communicate the needed direction to travel.

Finally, they breached the walls, escaping into the semi-light evening. The silver moon shone bright in the sky above and they all shot off towards it the second they stepped outside and into the cool breeze that soothed Ichigo and Angel's aches. Their wings all unfurled quickly and the three flock members stared at the boy they had saved as they could finally see him properly. Namely, his wings. His impressive wing span stretched across about 20 feet, bigger than any of those in their flock. Angel had been correct in saying that they were dark, at least for the most part. They were black at the base and continued that way up until about two feet from the end. Of that two feet, the first foot and a half was deep red and the remaining six inches stark white.

They soared in peaceful silence until it was broken by Gazzy. "So, what's with the orange hair?"

"It's natural!" Ichigo yelled in exasperation as they touched down at the assigned meeting place where they were to meet the rest of the flock. The first one they saw was Max who had been waiting outside in the anticipation of being reunited with her youngest flock member. She had run to them as soon as she heard them but she had not been ready to meet an entirely new person, standing there among three of her flock, her family.

Squeezing Angel's shoulder as a short reunion that she was certainly going to continue once she had cleared up the situation at hand, she approached the tall stranger, taking in his rather unique appearance. She tried to make herself seem taller and larger than what she actually was as she approached, staring him in the eyes.

"Who are you?"

"Ichigo Kurosaki. Yourself?"

"Why should I answer you?"

"Where I come from it's polite to introduce yourself before asking someone else to do the same. As you can tell, I've already let you past that one, but this at the very least is fair, no?"

She exhaled heavily, gritting her teeth and wishing that the boy didn't have a valid point and an air of insolence in which to explain it "Maximum Ride. Max." then she turned to her familiar flock members "What's happening?"

They began to brief her on the situation, well, as much of it as they were aware of. As she nodded along she was surprised to see Ichigo contribute information, even if the way he did so was short. Finally, their explanation ended.

"So," she began to summarise their rather long explanation, not that she would have been satisfied with anything but "You're telling me that the School ran out of willing donors so they began to kidnap kids of all different ages to experiment on instead?"

She was cut off by Ichigo "I suspect it was also for experiments sake. They wanted to see if they could successfully change the DNA of an already developed person to be like your own."

"Right. And you," she gestured to the orange-haired boy "Were kidnapped _from Japan_ and experimented on, becoming their only success?"

"Exactly." Iggy confirmed. "Angel asked us to rescue him, he was the only one in that entire building who could have survived the escape."

"You want to return to Japan, I'm assuming?" max confirmed, growing slightly more comfortable with the stranger's presence, even if not entirely.

"Not really." He winced "The trouble that they had to go through to get me here, you'd have thought they'd just give up. My dad attacked them when he saw there were intruders but they managed to overpower and kill him along with my sisters. Even if I were to go back to japan, it's hardly as if I'd have a home to return to."

Ange looked up at Max with ocean eyes pleading "Max? Can he please stay with us?"

Max looked between her and Ichigo who was uncomfortably shoving his hair to one side of his head, looking even more surprised with the young girl's proposal than she was. "If you want to?"

Ichigo didn't take too long to answer and the answer itself was simple "Sure, thanks." But she could tell it actually meant a lot to him, behind the scowl and the sceptical eyes.

"Well, come on. The flock wants to see you, Angel. Ichigo, I'm sure Nudge can't wait to talk you ear off."

He groaned "Great, because I'm definitely the most talkative person in the world."

Angel laughed lightly as they walked back into the woods, going by foot rather than flying for fear of drawing attention to themselves, the problems associated with which only amplified by Ichigo's lack of shirt or jacket to hide his wings in. After all, they were escapees of an illegal organisation with an incredibly difficult situation to explain. Things may not be received well.


	2. Chapter 2

Ichigo had soon found out that Max hadn't been exaggerating. Not in the slightest. Nudge had no hesitated to run to his side the very moment he had walked into their camp, trailing the members of the flock. It hadn't taken long, it probably would have taken longer if he didn't have what was essentially a traffic cone on his head.

Nudge had rushed straight at him while the final member of the flock went straight to Max, sending him an untrusting look. The boy was shorter than himself, dressed all in black with hair of the same colour. He was the sort of person that got overlooked in crowds, the type that seemed to be able to disappear. He just didn't have any particularly defining features, much unlike Ichigo himself.

Nudge had flown at him so fast that he wasn't sure whether she was a human or bird. He supposed that she was both, even if only 2% of one of the two. It wasn't until she opened her mouth that he could properly determine which of the two that was. He turned to look at her, hoping to discreetly hide the fact that he had been poised to attack the moment that he knew she was coming towards him - it had become a habit quite some time ago. She talked ridiculously quickly, her hair moving along with her mouth - dark corkscrews bouncing on her slim shoulders. Her coco eyes were focused on him so intently that they became unnerving. Her dark hands moved as she spoke, illustrating her questions and points. It was all that he could do to keep up with her rushed questions and queries.

"What's your name? Did Gazzy and Iggy rescue you? Were you with Angel? Where are you from? Why did you dye your hair? What did the school do to you? How old are you? Are you going to be staying with us?"

The moment that she finally paused for breath he began to answer the first string of questions of what he was fairly certain would be many. He really wished that max had been exaggerating. "My name's Ichigo. Yes they did. I was. Japan. My hair is natural! I've got wings like you guys. I'm fifteen. I think so."

"Awesome! Japan? Whereabouts? Can I see your wings, if you're gonna be staying with us you're gonna have to let us at some point, right?"

"Oh, umm Karakura Town. Sure, I suppose?" The last question had thrown him off slightly - how exactly was one supposed to respond to such a thing as that?

Meanwhile, Fang was asking questions of his own, scrutinising his flock members and trying to ensure that they knew exactly what they were doing. There was a lot that could go wrong should they allow a new member into their group. Pessimistically, he saw every single one of them lay themselves out as if on display before him.

There was something off about the stranger - even beyond the wings attached to his back. he couldn't explain it but he knew it was there. Besides, what was hair like _that_ going to do to thei ability to sneak around?

Then their conversation had been interrupted by a sound that could be interpreted as either a squeal of excitement or a cry of desperate help. Thankfully, it appeared to be the former. "They're so pretty! Max, what bird d'ya reckon that they mixed him with?" her dark hand was hovering inches above the now-unfurled wing of a nervously laughing Ichigo who was sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck as the whole ordeal occurred with him as its central figure.

Max had to admit that the wings were, well she supposed pretty was an apt adjective (even if probably not one Ichigo would like much). The black that covered about eighteen feet worth of feathers was only just visible in front of the always darkening back-drop provided by the evening sky behind, gradually becoming littered with clusters of stars. If she hadn't been looking properly she supposed that the remaining brightness that tipped each of his wings could be seen as though it were floating behind him in the dimness of the on-coming night.

"I honestly don't know Nudge. Ichigo, do you know?" His only response was a shake of the head, emphasised by the whip-like movement of his over-long hair as it shifted across the tops of his shoulders.

"So, shift in conversation topic," he said, folding his wings back along his back as he approached her "Do we have any plans."

"Not really, right now it's just survive until we can come up with one to help some of the kids in different School buildings."

"Mm. Good idea, but I may have something to suggest."

"We're gonna listen to him?" Fang speculated, hovering over Max's shoulder.

"Listen for just one second! It's pretty much impossible for this to put us in danger!" He glared at the dark-clad boy, seeming to have heard him despite the low volume of his voice. "I was just going to suggest that we disguise ourselves, at least slightly, to avoid anyone who worked there from recognising us, is all. If you're doubtful about me I don't blame you. But still, you need to remember that people who have been amidst your ranks for a long time can betray you as well. That being said, do not trust me just yet. It's not that I want to hurt you or your flock - Fang, was it? - it's just that if you don't I'll be able to say that you are at least semi-intelligent. Goodnight!"

He had flung himself up onto a branch mid way up a tall tree without the use of his wings and entirely no application of effort. He looked out from amidst the leaves, beginning to turn the colour of rust as the year progressed and Autumn grew nigh, and waved mockingly before falling onto the thick branch on which he was perched and hoping and praying to all power entities he could possibly think of it that he wouldn't fall out of it in a state of sleep.

It had dimmed drastically and the flock had clambered to "bed" themselves shortly after him, but still he could not sleep. The sky around him was pitch black, an abyss that hung ominously above him, staring back into him with more intensity the longer that he watched it. The stars had came out earlier but had since been covered with a shroud of thick, grey cloud that would often dance in front of the full-moon before allowing it to shine in full glory once again. It was had, too hard, not to think just how different the sky he was looking up to see was to the one that his friends could see above them. Would they miss him or would they not worry? he had become liable to disappearing. He didn't know how long it had been, nor when he would come back - just when would his friends decide that he had been gone for too long to have left voluntarily. Obviously, they would know what had happened to his family, what would that change?

There had been an odd pressure pushing at the edge of his mind briefly before and he didn't know what it was. He had felt it twice, the first encroaching upon his sleep as he stood in his inner world among its other inhabitants who had effortlessly pushed it back. The second had been later and he had been at least half awake when the time rolled by but the sensation was much the same, as was the annoyed growl of the white hollow that lived within his Inner World. It hadn't seemed evil, something he was all too familiar with, merely curious, in actuality. It was almost childish. That was exactly why he assumed that, someway and somehow, Angel had been the one trying to reach into his mind. Even though the attempt had failed it was a rather frightful fact that could be useful later. Just how, beyond what had been expected, had the artificial and unnatural manipulation of their genes caused them to mutate?

Finally, with a lot of things left to ponder about, his mind slipped into the deep sleep that had awaited it for so long. It was as though Morpheus himself had welcomed him the realm hat seemed almost unfamiliar to him at that point, his arms warm and wide open, entirely ready to circle hi in the warm embrace of sleep.

He woke up at last, mind cleared slightly and thoughts set straight within his mind. The sky above was a mixture of colours, quite unfortunately looking bruise-like due to the thin film of cloud and fog that covered just about everything, that floated above him in replacement of the abyss. Max was up as well, as was Iggy, though everyone else was still snoring soundly in the cubbies of tees that they had found comfort in. The two living figures of their so-called camp were crouched around a fire, sizzling slightly and fairly weak. He supposed the usual manner in which he was used to being woken up had been motivation enough to wake. Speaking of, what as the case with his father? Was he alive in Soul Society, robbed of his spiritual pressure again or re-joining the Gotei Thirteen (doubtful) or had his soul died as well as his body due to the _circumstance?_

Not wanting to dwell, he vaulted himself down to the floor below him, only realising just how far of a descent such a thing would be to a normal human when his feet touched onto the floor, the moist grass flicking at the edges of his worn trainers and soaking through into his socks and onto his feet. Max looked at him with wide, brown eyes and a dropped jaw whereas Iggy had turned upon registering a loud noise from that direction.

"You do know that you have fully functional wings, don't you? That was, like, a suicide jump!" she exclaimed as he calmly strolled over and began to watch Iggy cooking over the weak fire with a staggering, mocking-seeming nonchalance.

"Suicide jump? Please, I've jumped from things three times that high and been entirely fine."

"Is that so?" Fang crawled out of his own low-hanging place of rest, growing more untrusting and suspicious about the teenager with each statement that he made "Just who are you?"

"No one of importance." he scanned the two unimpressed faces that looked up at him before trying not to snigger at the face Iggy made as he forced himself to focus on anything but his peers "Plans for today?"

"There's a town just up here," Max jabbed her left thumb over her shoulder with no lack of force. "We'll head in and to the library. We can also work on how to disguise ourselves from the people that would be more familiar with our appearances. I don't know if I trust you yet, but I do trust that your suggestion was genuine."

He nodded before taking a seat besides Iggy on the ground. The smell of the wet leaves that were just beginning to fall filled his nose as he became closer to them, the smell of soil just drifting along in the air around him. It helped to ground him, let him know that this was no forced situation in the lab nor a fault of mind, induced by immense stress. Really, he couldn't help but thin, it was a wonder how his hair hadn't been robbed of its pigment or began to fall out. It wasn't the best thing to think of, how well his body was holding together even if his mentality wasn't. He was certain his definitions of normalcy and worry had been drastically warped since the nigh when his mother had met her end, since he time when he would habitually skip school in an attempt to escape, since the day when Rukia first appeared in his room, entirely oblivious of his sight until she felt a foot planted in her back, since the battle had began and all Hell had broken loose.

The feeling was strange, abnormal and the type he had to search for himself, but thee was something that told him that they were in a stranger situation than the one he had already began to adapt to. he was always called a fast learner - from the short amount of time it had taken him to release his bankai to the shocked murmurs of the white coats when they saw just how little time he needed to learn to use his wings. Just like he had found his wings, he was beginning to find his feet in the foreign situation. Along with all of this came what could possibly become a family should time and participants allow. If that were to happen he knew one thing if not anything else, even if he knew what would happen, he would not let them die - not again. he was done losing and they would suffer if he did.

Abruptly, he had been snapped from his thoughts with not-so-much-as-a-trace of subtlety. There had been food placed in front of him by an elegant, dark hand and several people squished in net to him, trying not to get lost amongst the looming figures of the tree. Of course, it was Nudge who had never once lost her fascination with the boy she was sure not even the school could really explain. Max looked over to Nudge as she eagerly took her seat an prepared to begin an alternating sequence of consuming her breakfast and drilling at Ichigo with even more questions than the incessant list she had given him the night before.

"Oh!" She interrupted the string of queries before even the first syllable had escaped Nudge's opened lips "Ichigo. I just remembered. You're going to need a shirt if you're to go into a public rea."

"Good point." Sighing in frustration, he turned to fang and bit down on his lip slightly, scowl settling so deeply into his face that it almost seemed as though he would permanently be unable to lighten the drastically unpleasant expression. "As much as you don't like me - and trust me, the feeling is returned - could you please spot me a shirt?"

Neither participants of the so-called conversation were the fondest of words so, once all urgent need for them had been lost, the exchange continued on silently. he threw a piece of expectedly dark fabric at Ichigo who abruptly pulled it on, noting hat it was slightly short but not enough to find a problem with it. he nodded, scowl still firmly set in place, before preparing to leave with the Flock who were shoving their meagre amount of belongings into travel bags of different sizes, shapes and colours. It almost seemed as though they were preparing to leave for school, the one in which there was not a drastic lack of basics morals, nor was there an always increasing mortality rate. It was terrible to see just how he regarded the situation amongst all those that surrounded him. That was how you could tell just how truly odd a situation was. For, what else could you call a situation n which normalcy seemed like an act of rebellion?


	3. Chapter 3

Ichigo watched the city around him, moving at a mile a minute and making him and his companions seem slow alongside it as they walked. He almost wanted to shunpo, to keep up with everything all at once. The library stood out among the many modern buildings that lined the streets, it was hardly a challenge to pinpoint the library. The building was old, not overly so but a fair few decades behind the rest of the street.

Together, he walked with the flock, through the wooden doors and into the clearly labelled building. Something about him that tended to surprise people was his love for classical literature, William Shakespeare in particular. That was just what made the whole scene appear so familiar to him, it was rather grounding when compared to streets they had just left behind.

It was made clear that Nudge didn't particularly like books and the others held no visible opinions. Ichigo almost wished that he would be able to look amongst the books but knew that they were running on a tight schedule. They headed straight towards the computers.

They were large machines, clearly, they hadn't been replaced in years, smudged by the hands of many children and all lined up along a table top with a single chair placed directly in front of each. Max took a seat in front of one, mid row, and the others spread to either side of her, taking their own seats.

Nudge worked fast, scanning the web with fast fingers and fast eyes that perfectly matched her fast mouth. It hadn't taken long before she had found the location of another of the buildings where the School would be at work. To someone blissfully unaware of the events that occurred in those buildings, there would be no value to the information. The School building was in Europe.

Before long they left the building.

Angel was watching Ichigo again, as he appeared to be deep in thought. Even in the sleep he himself had induced, one where he should not have been on guard, she had still not been able to breach his mind. The black force she tried to push through pushed back a lot harder, seeming to invade her mind oppressively. She could only hope that Ichigo was unaware of what his mind did to hers. If he knew what he was doing, not only putting up a wall but also a guard that actually acted, that did not speak well of how he would be to react within their flock.

She was hesitant to tell max, if he _was_ unaware she may have ruined what could well be his last chance of finding a place to belong. What she, of course, did not know was that there was no where he could belong. He was a human, a Shinigami, a Hollow, a Quincy and, now, an experiment.

Their initial plan had been to find things that they would not normally wear and purchase them, get some scissors and cut their own hair – the DIY approach to creating a disguise. But then Gazzy had seen a flyer, colourful paper taped to a store window and flapping in the wind where it was not attached. Rather fortunately for them, it advertised a free makeover for anyone willing to allow the specialist team to take complete control over the fate of the customer's interest.

It seemed like the best choice.

The moment that they had spoken their request to those at the address specified on the flyer they had been split up.

Max stood with her arms crossed as they supplied her with clothes, admittedly nicer ones that the tattered, dirty shirt and bodywarmer she had been wearing, along with jeans with even more holes than wear had worn into her last pair. She shrugged on the leather jacket, feeling the warmth of the semi-tight material settle onto her shoulders and the warmth it supplied spread quickly. She was happy to see that the shoes on her feet, the thick-soled boots that laced up to mid-way up her shin, were more suited to combat than the other available options she had seen.

That's not to say that she was entirely happy about the situation as they added highlights to her hair and caked makeup onto her face. It was impractical to keep such a high regard of your own image!

Fang was unresponsive the entire time, Nudge was ecstatic, Angel was enjoying being fawned over, Gazzy had almost cleared the room when his gastric system acted up (again), Iggy was getting fed up of the pity that was given to him due to his visual impairment and Ichigo… well.

Originally the jeans with which he had been supplied were baggy, though not as much so as the trousers of his Shinigami uniform, and allowed an excess of air to pass through to his thin legs. He supposed he was almost lucky he had been deprived of a substantial meal for as long as he had, stupid-of-a-reason as it was, for the worrying depletion of his already slim waist had made wearing the jeans impossible. He had hissed and glared, scowled deeper, the moment that the team commented on it.

Luckily enough, he had soon gotten a tighter outfit, though it was still rather looser than what he would normally choose to wear by choice, not long after. But then there had been the hair and makeup, though the latter they had skipped entirely.

He sat in silence, fiddling with one of the loose threads from his ripped, black jeans and scowling at the glaringly white floor. He had looked up earlier and hadn't been entirely pleased with what he saw. He fought a lot, so seeing his face covered in sweat, blood and mud was not an odd occurrence, but seeing it as it was then was displeasing.

They had provided him with a wipe which he had used gratefully, before realising that he was just revealing he true damage that had been done. He looked tired, like he was about to drop into a deep sleep then and there, with eyes that refused to open entirely and dark circles that stained his skin slightly purple. It was like a bruise.

He had seen the scarring on the failures, he had seen the scarring he had received previously, but he had not been prepared to see, with the amount of blood he wiped off, there was not a scratch on his face. Well, a new one at least.

Still, he was gaunter and his skin was gaining a sickly yellow pallor. His hair was a greasy mess that hung down his face in messy strands that he hadn't noticed with the bleariness of his vision that came with the excessive tiredness he felt. It hung down to his shoulder blades, spiky and uneven as ever but matted with blood. He didn't know whether it was his or if it belonged to the other failures he had shared rooms, sometimes even cages, with before being sent to the room where he met Angel.

Finally, they were reunited, all looking noticeably cleaner as well as different. Ichigo anxiously bit at the ring they had added to his lip and tugged at the dark fabrics that they had clothed him in. He was often considered a punk before, what with the orange hair and the short temper, this would only make things worse. Not to mention that it was strange.

At least there was one major positive, his hair had been cropped to the length he was used to, not to mention washed, and was considerably more manageable and less irritating that way. The rest of the flock looked like themselves to him who knew them by face, they would have to, but they would be unrecognisable to anyone who was not holding a conversation with (or staring them in the face awkwardly for whatever reason) them.

He was glad he had suggested the idea of quote-unquote "makeovers" when he saw the smiles that overtook both Angel and Nudge's faces. He could see them both eventually taking the empty role of "Little sister" that had been left in his life; they would not be replacements for Yuuzu and Karin, but their own thing entirely. But, of course, that would only be if he stuck around long enough for such a thing to occur.

As they were in city and Max had (somehow) came into a bit of money, they planned to spend as many nights as they could get in a cheap motel – anything was better than sleeping in a tree – while still saving money for food, and bird-kids needed much more of that than most.

Food was the first thing on their agenda. It just brought the fact that Ichigo could quite physically not remember the last time he had eaten to the forefront of his mind. He may have been embarrassed at the loud rumbling noise his stomach made is he wasn't so darn hungry, luckily enough it appeared that that sentiment was shared across them unanimously. Ichigo could feel a vague sense of amusement as he realised that, even if it wasn't the only thing that they would ever agree on, it would probably be the only thing that he and fang ever _admitted_ to agreeing on. Overtime he had been forced to learn how to judge characters, a skill that would have been so much more helpful if it had developed sooner, and he could already tell that Fang was mulishly stubborn.

They decided to go to a cheap diner not far from the place where they had gotten their "disguises". As they took their seats at a booth clearly made for a couple fewer people than their party contained a waitress walked over, flashing bright, white teeth as she bore a painfully fake smile, eyes held open through sheer force and red lipstick smudged. Ichigo was too busy pondering, trying to create a story behind what was clearly the result of some kind of stressful situation, to notice that she had begun talking. When he factored in the fact that she was speaking quickly, with a thick accent to boot, in his second language he realised he was probably the one that needed to pay the most attention.

Before long, the waitress set the menus down in front of them and left to wait on another table on their left. Ichigo picked up the menu and skimmed over it before hoping that he wasn't the only one who was planning to order enough food to feed a family of four. Thankfully, he was not.

The waitress returned too long and asked for them to order their drinks first, Ichigo watched the others order a variety of sodas before realising, once again, just how long it had been since he had any decent nourishment at all, really, that wasn't supplied to him via tube. He merely ordered a cold water and sat waiting for it to come, silent, just a fang was, to the side of the conversation held by the other flock members.

It was just before the waitress returned with their drinks that he felt _it_ again _:_ the nagging feeling that was somehow both a push and a pull at the corner of his mind, trying to push through the barrier there that had, no doubt, been supplied by one of the two spirits that lived within his head. He almost laughed at the thought, biting the cool metal again to prevent himself from doing so, it made him seem, for lack of a better word, insane.

As he set the drinks own she smiled again, face contorting uncomfortably around the forced pull of her facial muscles, and asked, with her voice as sickly-sweet and put-on as her smile, "Do you know what you would like?"

They nodded their confirmation and Max began to give her order. It seemed that she had assumed that max was ordering for all of them as, after Max had closed of her sentence with a final "please" she made a subtle move to turn and move away until Gazzy had begun to speak. They all followed, going in order around the table and ordering enough to feed from four to five of themselves (should they have been entirely human). Ichigo couldn't help but think he was the only one paying attention to the way that her face fell, the smile faded slowly and began to sink to a look of shock so extreme that it became extremely comedic.

She left without another word after both Fang and Ichigo had mumbled their orders, though quiet the amount was no less than any of the others. Again, Ichigo sat to the side of the conversation, looking everywhere but at Fang who was doing the same. He entirely refused to acknowledge the similarities that they shared in that moment.

When the woman finally came with their food she was carrying a single order at a time and struggling with even that. It took rather a while to acquire the entirety of their party's orders and the sheer volume meant that they could only just fit it all on the table. Everyone had been forced to rest their hands by their sides once their elbows had been pushed off and was desperately trying not to elbow their neighbour too violently as they cut into their food.

The food itself was greasy. Some bits weren't burnt but were still slightly over cooked and some the opposite. Ichigo felt himself holding back this opinion as it bubbled to the surface in the very back of his mind, pushed away by the overwhelming sense of hunger he felt and the logical reasoning that forced him to rationalise with the scale of their order and how had it must have been on the chef(s).

Of course, it didn't hold a torch to Yuuzu's homemade food that he had enjoyed for years, but he simply could not bring himself to care. He was lost to the world, as were, it would seem, his companions. He really couldn't taste much of what he ate, he could merely feel it falling into his empty stomach, slowly filling it.

Eventually he leaned back, head resting against the flat part of the top of the chair and sighing slightly I a mixture of relief and contentment. Of course, he couldn't be blamed for the relief h felt, he had been hungry for so long that he had nearly lost any sense of the feeling of hunger that was, not to his knowledge, eating away at him. He had quite literally been staring, it was a wonder how he hadn't collapsed from the exertion of escaping, flying and walking.

He hadn't, unsurprisingly after so long, been the first to finish. The waitress seemed to have been watching them all in a sense of awe as the very slim teenagers and children all consumed such a mass of food she was sure should have caused drastic weight gain with no struggle at all. As she saw the boy with the bright hair finish, the last even if it was only a moment after the blonde girl, she walked over to them with hopes of either supplying them with another drink or collecting their payment.

The last time that she left hat table of kids he left with a rather large payment. That payment was also the end of her shift. She left through the back door, walking into the alley behind her and breathing in some of the pungent air that surrounded her. The cold burned her throat slightly. But there was something that burned her throat more. What was it? The cold blade that pushed up against the front of her neck before slowly piercing through it.

She couldn't scream as the blood rose to her mouth and spilled from the corners, hitting the floor with a splatter that nobody seemed to hear. She inhaled once, or tried to, sharply and with no success, before gasping breathlessly and crumpling to the floor. The figure who held the murder weapon grinned and knelt by the side of the dead woman, the dark fabric of their rousers soaking up the blood they had placed their knees in.

There was a cold, quiet laugh that was lost to the sounds of the street before gloved hands brushed across the forehead of the dead waitress. Those fingers smeared blood in a seemingly very specific pattern though it was neither a word nor a legible image. That laugh rang again, lost just as it was before, as the weapon was placed purposefully and meticulously in line with the fallen woman's slender torso. They left, smearing their foot through the crimson puddle with a sense of finality, laughing as they did.

The next morning, when a young employee had come to open the diner for the breakfast option that it supplied, he dropped the keys he held in his hand in an instant, petrified as he stood on the spot too scared to move towards the body n he floor before him, the sicky red/brown substance staining his shoes. With nothing else to do, he screamed. He screamed until his voice was hoarse and he felt as though his lungs were about to burst.

It was horrifying, he was a high-school student working his Saturday shift, but there he was, looking at the corpse. He had known the woman, to worsen the situation. Her once-blue eyes were rolled back into her head and her forehead was stained with a deliberate-looking abstract symbol. Her head was hardly clinging to her body, attached by only a mere bloody, mangled strip of skin and sinew.

Hands shaking, he grasped for the phone in his pocket and tried to press the keys for the emergency number with much difficulty. 911.

He could only stand, shake and sob as he waited for the loud tell-tale blare of the sirens to grown nearer d the law-enforcement officer to rush to his side. Just as they did so, he felt the situation become far too much to bare. He fell into the arms of the officer before he could tell them what he knew, entirely unconscious and shaking even then.

 **A/N So this is a slightly random tidbit of information from your local (or not so local) British girl that will have no effect on the plot. So, I almost forgot that I was setting this in America and wrote (and clearly changed) 999 instead of 911 because that's the emergency number over here, if anyone was unaware. Also, yes, this will all be relevant to the overall plot and is kind of a start to the explanation as to why I am AU-ing the Maximum Ride that I use. I'm just going to throw a "thank you" in here as well, for all of the reviews, follows and favourite that I have gotten from this story, I really am grateful for them. For now, that's all I have to say.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	4. Chapter 4

A shrill shriek cut through the air like a knife through butter. It sliced straight down the centre of existence and split it into two, the halves falling evenly onto either side of the metal. One half heard and cringed at the noise, pitiful and shrill - for that shriek was one of theirs. The other half heard not a thing, just the night around them, calm and undisturbed by anything but the odd mew of a cat or call of an owl - they were not to meddle with this word of which they did not know. But some butter remained smeared across the once shiny metal, even if only a little; hands were lifted to ears as the outsider looking in felt the noise pound at his eardrums.

He was awake and alert, unable to tell which of the two sides of the so called coin the noise was coming from. As someone standing dead centre on the edge it was a hard thing to do - to differentiate between the two when there was nothing particularly distinguishable present besides fear, and that was a universal emotion. All sleep left without a trace and the teenager, used to awakenings both similar in nature and worse watched as the scene before him continued with stifling normalcy, undisturbed by the very disturbing thing. Fang was asleep on the settee, clearly visible from where Ichigo slept draped over a desk chair that would not stop protesting under his weight. Fang's chest continued to rise and fall steadily, all indications that he was asleep and unbothered by the noise on show. Iggy and Gazzy lay side by side on the bed meant for one, tangled together at the legs and snoring. They were just as deep within Morpheus' realm as Fang. Ichigo would bet the situation would be similar if he were to peer into the girl's room next door, though he would not.

The coin flipped. Tails.

He found himself stumbling unsteadily onto the flat, shining plane of the coin, pressing the wooden badge he had somehow managed to keep a hold of through all the things the School had done to him to his chest and separating his soul and body. He checked his body to make sure it looked asleep and not passed out before leaving via the window. He fell several stories and landed in front of a row of bushes, feet planted neatly on the ground and knees bent slightly to avoid gaining damage from impact.

One leg extended far behind the other, he pushed off from the one at the front far faster than any human could ever hope to and ran in the direction of the unrelenting scream that simply would neither stop nor leave his already ringing eardrums. He judged his direction only on hearing and didn't even take in the unfamiliarity of his surroundings as he easily avoided what he supposed may have been obstacles to most people.

As he neared and the scream grew louder and hoarser as the essentially vestigial lungs of the ghost were emptied of oxygen. Buildings slowly warped until they became recognisable, he had seen everything the day before and felt his stomach go heavy. His heart dropped and he could feel it beating a horribly unsteady rhythm.

There was a crime scene before him, behind the diner he had ate at the night before. But that wasn't the worst of it. He didn't know where it was from but the symbol traced onto the woman's forehead felt familiar. Still, no matter how much he raked his memory, he could not remember from where. It was like he was doing a puzzle but a piece had been missed by the manufacturer. Worse still, he woman was familiar. It was the woman from before, the waitress who had served them with the fake smile and smudged makeup. It didn't look entirely like a crime scene, she had been placed, probably by the murderer, in such a way that she appeared to be sleeping.

Or at last she would have been had her head not been cut almost entirely from her body and her bed made of sticky, dried blood.

There was a boy, maybe only a year or two older than Ichigo, siting on the curb, wrapped in a blanket and gently being questioned by a police officer. Her hair, rather ironically, was dyed the same colour as the spilt blood had stained the once peroxide blonde hair of the victim.

The screaming had diffused to sobbing as he took in the scene, ugly sobs with gasps filling the short gap between each heaving wail.

The ghost sat to the side of her own body, planted in the spill of her own blood.

He had always known that ghosts were exactly like the people that they had once been. Well, Pluses were. When their chains finally disappeared as did that humanity.

The woman had probably died not long after they had left, he reasoned after an examination of the scene and the ghost sat to the side of it.

He approached, trying not to think of just how undeterred he was at vaulting the police tape and wading through the blood. As he passed he could hear the boy, just as desperate for the air he actually needed as the ghost was for that which she didn't.

He was used to it. Explaining to ghosts that they were dead and that he was sending them to the next world, even if he did sometimes have to call it heaven to get them there.

He crouched by her side and place a hand on her shoulder. She flinched. Her eyes were turned to him, bloodshot and puffy.

"Do you know what's happening?" He asked her, hoping he didn't look to intimidating. he probably did.

She gulped and gasped, shaking her head and shaking out an answer. "Who are you? What are you? What am I?"

"That's a no then." He grumbled. He was good a slaying Hollows, not so much at performing Konso on distraught ghosts who new nothing of their own deaths. "I'm a Shinigami and you're a ghost - a Plus - it's hard to explain but I can send you onto the 'next life'. You'll get a better explanation there." He heard a roar somewhere in the distance and sped his explanation up "We don't have much time. They'll explain it there."

"Who are 'they'?"

"We don't have much time." He pushed through gritted teeth. "I won't hurt you." He insisted as she recoiled at him drawing his Zanpakuto "This is how we send you on." He flipped the blade with ease, pointing the blunt of he hilt at her. "Welcome to the Soul Society." He pushed it against her forehead and watched her disappear.

Then he ran to the source of the roaring, growing nearer and nearer with every passing second.

Killing hollows was one thing he understood, a break from the confusion that had crowded his brain from the moment that he had woken up to run to the source of the scream.

I was over too quickly. he was strong and the hollow was one of the weakest he had seen in a while. The gates of Hell did not open before him. Within the space of fifteen minutes he had sent two souls to Soul Society. he hadn't done that in a while but it sill felt entirely familiar for him to send the spirits of the good humans who had turned to Hollows one way or another to the next life.

He sheathed his Zanpakuto, the two knives into their separate holders, and headed back to the motel via the wings shared by both his body and soul. He hadn't been out for long and Iggy was just beginning to stir. Ichigo re-entered his body, standing and heading to the bathroom.

He splashed water over his face, shivering at the cold as he realised that it would not warm up. He stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. It was dirty. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and his brand new lip wring paired with both them and his hair that had always caused misconceptions made him look as though he were the violent punk that he was often perceived as. He undressed and stepped into the shower. The water was just as cold as that from the sink. He didn't care.

Iggy had woken up enough to speak and move around by the time Ichigo had stepped into the shower. he was trailing his hand around the walls, unfamiliar with where he was walking and unable to see. He yawned and spoke as he heard the shower start and a little bit of unhappy mumbling in a language he didn't Understand.

"Ichigo? Is that you?"

"Iggy?" The other spoke through the wall "Morning."

"Morning. You fancy breakfast?"

"If you're offering."

"I am. Trust me, you do not want anybody else here to make food."

He laughed "Sure, I'll trust you."

He didn't stay under the shower for long, the water was freezing and he could smell food cooking. He dried off and, grimacing a little, pulled on the clothes he had slept in again. Then he left the bathroom, hair still dripping wet. His hair still stood on end, even messier than normal, rather than being plastered straight down like most people's.

He wandered into the kitchen at the same time as Max. She glanced at Ichigo. "You're up early."

"I've been up for a while." he admitted, tousling his messy, wet hair and bringing it all to one side.

She nodded and took a seat a the table. Ichigo did the same as she picked up the remote for the tiny, old TV and turned it onto the news.

"-Murder of a waitress aged 22 in New York City." Ichigo cringed, knowing exactly what was being talked about "The victim, Lindsay Costa, has been identified by her family and is believed to be the latest victim of serial murderer "Kille Inconnu" who, despite leaving the same symbol and identical weapon at the scenes of each of their crimes, has not yet been identified."

"Kille Inconnu?" Gazzy asked as he walked in, having heard through the door. "Never heard of them."

Max sighed "When would you have had time to her of the latest news."

But Ichigo knew that it was something else, this was something else and, for some reason, he was deep within the midst of everything.

All through breakfast Ichigo didn't dare speak even a single word. No one tied to force him to either. Really, the conversation surrounding him was of no consequence. For bird kids, their day was as mundane as it could be.

Ichigo didn't actually know why he was so unsettled. Sure, anyone wo had seen the crime scene first hand as he had, the boy who appeared to have discovered it for example, would b expected to have reacted in a way fa worse than he did. But he practically lived death. he shouldn't have been affected by this pint. He had had similar experiences in the past and had never reacted as he was now. So why was he acting as he was?

He mulled over things but still could not find the puzzle piece that he was missing. In fact, the longer that he looked the more pieces he could feel falling away. The image crumbled as the little sections that formed it began to get lost.

He tried to push down the thoughts that filled his head, supressing them as much as he could, the moment that he realised that he was only making things worse. It wasn't as successful as he had hoped. they kept bubbling up and resurfacing from the depths of his mind. The very same, he was sure, must have been flooding his inner world. Shiro would not be pleased.

The day that followed was as mundane as it could be for the bird kids who lived the sort of life regular people read about as fiction. They all found the break welcome, unsurprisingly not finding boredom to accompany the foreign sense of safeness. Ichigo spent the whole thing distracted. Still, pieces of the puzzle continued to break away.

By the time they got back to the motel after another meal that left the establishment amazed Ichigo realised that he no longer remembered what the symbol he had seen even looked like.

Angel saw Ichigo deep in thought and was almost desperate to know what about. She wasn't used to being left to ponder about the minds of other people, normally she could simply invade them. She tried again to enter.

Just as she usually did, she failed. But it was different to usual. there was no dark, mysterious, oppressive force that forced her out. Instead she felt as though she was being washed out as a wave pushed her back and beneath its surface. It was neither warm nor cool, only suffocating. She did not hesitate to retreat and began to hope again that the forces that kept her from wandering into Ichigo's mind were not there under his own conscious jurisdiction. She wanted to keep calling him a friend and that could easily change whether or not she would be allowed to.

Kille Inconnu was on the news again in the evening. Still, there were no leads.

Ichigo was growing antsier, more desperate to know that which he did not.

The reporters that relayed the story he was already ware of looked kind of dead behind the eyes. They stared straight forwards into camera lenses and focused on speaking without stumbling over words that had probably been rehearsed a fair few times. There was a certain rhythmic lilt and drop to their voices that made it clear that they were putting inflection into their monotone speech to try to convey a sense of emotion that wasn't there.

Thankfully he was pulled from the situation as he heard a Hollow roaring distantly. He dismissed himself from the gathering in which he played no part by pretending he was tired.

He left the room before leaving his body and laying it on the bed.

This Hollow was harder to kill than the one from the morning though still not hard enough to draw is mind entirely from its fruitless search for an answer that simply wasn't there.

The hollow swung its great tail at him as it snarled from somewhere behind its mask. It was strange to think that the creature who new of nothing but a primal desire to feed and grow in numbers was once a high-functioning human being.

He vaulted over the swinging appendage and landed on the creature's neck. It was a mass of muscle, moving agitatedly beneath his feet.

He drove the smaller of his blades into that mass of muscle, using it as a distraction as he leapt forwards and, with a single downward slice, shattered the Hollow's mask. It didn't even have time to roar as it lost everything that made it so inhuman and was sent to the Soul Society. That was three in a day after months of nothing.

He hadn't really been thinking of it earlier but he realised, as he flew back to the motel yet again, that the two fights he had had with Hollows that day had been within a mile of each other. They may have just been able to sense his spiritual energy, fair assumption to make, but that didn't explain why they had been so close to one another when they hadn't been within that near of a proximity to himself. Had they been looking for something else?

Just what was happening?

New York was becoming less of a concrete jungle and more of a concrete cage. It had them all trapped among a web of violent mysteries.

Who was the jailer and who were the guards?

Why did Ichigo feel as though he were, somehow, a central figure in all of this? It was like he was trapped in solitary confinement and claustrophobia were overcoming him. He didn't belong among the other prisoners. Nor did he belong among those who were deemed innocent.

It was just a question of how the system that was ruling that City defined innocence.

There was a blissful sense of obliviousness shared by the entire flock that Ichigo couldn't help but be unsettled by.

He pretended to have awoken from his sleep the minute that he got back. No one questioned him and the conversation went on as it had before his arrival.

He gulped down water from the biggest glass he could find and ran a had through his hair. His scowl deepened further still as he felt all logic leave. He tried to think when he had noting left to think on.

He had lost the puzzle earlier and now he felt the box the pieces had been kept in being torn o pieces and discarded with little care. He didn't even know what the puzzle was meant to look like anymore. Its image had been replaced by nothing except blankness so black that it burned his eyes.

Kille Inconnu was cruel. But still they found humour in the news reporting their story. Their cold laugh filled the air. The woman's blood had been pretty, painting the dismal grey floor a bight, beautiful red. they said that red was he colour of love but it was also the colour of death. Lots of people saw black as a shad of negativity. they would change that. they would replace the blandness with beauty. they would paint the whole world red. It was just a matter of time.

Red was better than black and grey and brown. Red shone brighter than pink and white and blue. Red drowned out orange.

 **A/N Wow, there are a fair few strange metaphors in this chapter. But hey, it's a chapter! I suppose I can explain the metaphor somewhat, I've been reading The Fifth Wave and that's chock full of them so I suppose I kind of adopted that subconsciously.**

 **Anyway, this is kind of random and probably doesn't show that much in this because I'm better at writing by hand than typing, but I'm at the top of my English writing class and we had a Parent/teacher night the other day. According to my English teacher I could probably pass the GCSE now (get between an A and a C/a 5 and an 8) which is incredible seeing as I won't actually be taking my GCSE's for about three years.**

 **So yeah, that's my life - all of my teaches putting lots of pressure o me to get ridiculously good results, even in things that I really couldn't care less about - there's so much pressure there that I couldn't even tell you.**

 **What I'm trying to say is, if this reads kind of weird or is full of more typos than usual it's probably because I'm writing it as a bit of stress relief because my options were either this or hit something (I hit pretty hard so either my hand or whatever I hit would suffer). Anyway, I'll stop writing the weirdest Author's Note ever and thank everyone that has read, reviewed, favorited and/or followed this story.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	5. Chapter 5

They did not spend the following night in the motel. Instead, they began on their long journey to Germany. Max still had enough money left to allow for them to spend a few nights in cheap establishments, such as the one that they had been recently, on their rest stops.

After checking out they brought some food that would not weigh them down too much before setting off. At the beginning of their long journey Ichigo could not bring himself to think about what lay ahead, about the potential their journey had of saving innocent kids.

No.

Kille Inconnu occupied his mind unrelentingly. The thought of a murderer was never a happy one but there was something more, something beyond slight remorse or unsettlement. He wasn't scared per se, the events seemed, though certainly not mundane, very human. He had faced things far scarier, things directly threatening to him and those he was closely affiliated with, but Kille Inconnu did not sit right with him. There was something more there than just the average feeling of fear associated with a madman, something far more.

He hadn't thought about it much before but he was now stretched between three worlds, all different from one another, while never truly fitting into any.

But he knew, from experience, that normalcy was not his thing. He would rather live within three worlds than one. It may have been a slight feeling of lachesism, though that was not something he wished to dwell on.

Angel was lagging behind slightly. She could fly at the same pace as the others were with ease, they were not travelling at a particularly fast pace as they wished to preserve their limited energy supplies as much as was possible. She was choosing to soar, observing the city below her.

It was a city constructed of dollhouses, in which dolls lived. Only, the child that played with all these dolls, the one that ruled over them and controlled them entirely, could be considered disturbed, perhaps quite far beyond.

It was a rather terrifying thought, that such a place that seemed so peaceful from so far away could look as innocent as the city did from so far away. It was disconcerting, showing that things are not always as they seem and that is not strictly a pleasant thing.

Nudge loved to fly, short distances especially. She wished the wind wasn't quite so hard on her hair yet she simultaneously loved the feeling of cool, refreshing on her skin as the wind danced past her. Her eyes stung with its unkind coldness but she could feel herself revelling in the reprieve it brought from the heat.

She knew it was Max who always took the front of their flying formation, though it was not often much of a formation, so she flew next to Ichigo who was close, though not invasively so, behind their leader. The same could be said of Fang who flew at a similar speed though on the other side of their group but Nudge had certainly not finished asking their newest members each of the myriad of questions she could think of.

He was quiet but, if asked to, he would speak as she wished of him.

She couldn't help but notice he appeared distracted, offering her a string of mumbled answers in a voice that gave nothing away, no emotion nor personality. It sounded robotic and he looked as though he would much rather be focusing his attention on the things he was thinking rather than what she was saying. She didn't want to allow him to slip into the world inside of his mind, if the look on his face and the tone in which he spoke were of any indication it was not a pleasant place in which to reside.

She was good with people, almost too good, and it was evident in the metaphors supplied by her thought process. They were not quite as metaphorical as she would like to have believed.

The night moved around them, undisturbed by the unusual presences in its velvety sky. Far below, the expanse of concrete died out almost entirely as city changed to town. The harsh geometry became more subtle and hard angles melted into curves.

Angel had watched as everything changed and was slightly shocked at just how quickly and drastically it had happened.

They were flying over a block of green, a forest far below, when the sky began to change. The backdrop in which they flew went from a blue so dark it was almost black to a lighter colour, streaked, as though painted in watercolour, with pale yellows and pinks. The sun was rising from behind the row of trees, stinging their eyes even more than the wind had previously as it brightened just as quickly as the scenery far below had.

They were all growing tired after flying all night, the day continuing sequentially around them, when they saw something that called for them to take action.

There were a group of teenagers, as miniaturised as the rest of what they could see. However, their gathering didn't seem the friendly sort. There was a group of three forming a circle that didn't appear to leave any gaps in its defence, another person placed in the centre, slowly moving backwards as the circle closed in on them.

Max sent the flock off to a local shop not far away from where the group were but Ichigo insisted he would go with her.

"What? Why?" She had asked when he proposed the idea.

"I've got a number of reasons." he told her, looking directly at her. He slowed and stood upright before her, moving up and down slightly with the steady beat of his wings, his arms crossed across his chest challengingly. "One," He lifted one arm, leaving the other to linger where it was, and displayed the number on his fingers "You still don't trust me entirely, if you're the leader you're probably the strongest - wouldn't it make the most sense to keep me where you can see me in case I start acting up?" She was quite surprised he would mention the fact that he may not be entirely trustworthy, she was aware it was normal for someone to try to protect themselves when in an unfamiliar circumstance and he had done the opposite. "Two." He lifted another finger "With me, at least, local shops do not mean good things are about to happen." He averted his eyes slightly and muttered under his breath "Geta-Boushi."

"What?" Max asked, not catching the mumble.

"Irrelevant." He dismissed with a wave of the hand he had been counting on. "Moving on." He shifted his eyes back up towards hers "Three." He lifted three fingers "Things look like they're getting ugly," He lifted his thumb and pinky finger and swiped his hand in a downwards direction "And, while I don't doubt that you can handle a few lowly bullies, it's better to be too prepared than not prepared enough."

"Fine." She relented, casting her eyes downwards as things got progressively worse. "But only because you're stubborn and I don't have time for this."

He swooped down, towards the people and Ichigo made to follow; as he did he caught the venomous look Fang wore that was definitely directed at him. He let his scowl sink deeper into his features and turned his head so he could see Fang more clearly. He blinked once, slowly, and watched, somewhat satisfied, as Fang's fists tightened and his lips thinned. It was rather amusing to do so when he really hadn't done anything to anger the boy in the first place.

He and Max landed at the edge of the woods just outside of the range of sight of the group of teenagers, they could do without revealing their not-entirely-human nature to them, and ran straight to where it was. Both could move at speeds that would not have been possible of a normal human being and Max still found herself considerably behind.

Ichigo ran straight onto the bit of concrete where the group was, coming to a halt before he went tumbling into them as they continued to move slowly and threateningly inwards, fists raised, too preoccupied and immersed in their task to notice his sudden presence, and waiting for max to show herself. He hadn't been very considerate of her when he started running, even if it hadn't been as fast as he could get there it was quite a ridiculous belief that Max would be able to keep up.

At last, she too reached the bit of concrete on which he stood. She turned his head to him and he caught her nodding in his peripheral vision. He took that as a sign to interrupt. That was good thing as it seemed that perhaps the largest of the teenagers forming the constantly narrowing circle was about to throw the first punch at the hunched figure in the centre.

With a sudden burst of speed he intercepted the punch, catching it easily in his hand and applying enough pressure to trap it there. He allowed the other two to register what had just happened for a moment before catching a glimpse of another kid, sprawled across the floor and looking like he had suffered through something much more than a simple beating up at the hands of three teenagers. The figure he had defended whimpered from behind him. His face changed, eyes narrowing, scowl deepening and reiatsu slipping slightly. Feeling the sudden change in atmosphere the other two bullies stepped back, looking uneasy and pallid. Max quickly kicked the first as the other tripped over a branch lying across the floor. Ichigo looked straight forwards unblinkingly as the one he had trapped squirmed and tried as much as he dare to retreat. Ichigo didn't let him. His grip tightened slowly until he heard the boy whimper like the figure kneeling on the floor behind him, followed by a loud popping noise.

He released the boy's hand, satisfied upon seeing the bruised, swollen appendage. He had broken it.

He gave him no sympathy, instantly throwing a punch of his own the other boy weakly tried to dodge, still threatened by the murderous presence filling the air. The punch hit its mark, sending the boy flying backwards into a tree, hitting his head and slumping against the trunk unconscious.

Max was doing well with the other boy as the third continued to watch from the floor, petrified. She dodged a clumsy punch and let one of her own fly, landing squarely on the boy's jaw and disorienting him entirely. She let out a sigh and turned towards Ichigo.

Then things went wrong.

The boy who had not been hit by either reached a shaking hand into the inside of his jacket, pulling out something that Ichigo couldn't quite see.

But then he could and he was sure he was too late to act. Still, he was better trying than not.

He moved forwards as fast as he possibly could, wishing that he could flash step without changing into his spiritual form, and grabbed the boy's wrist tightly. He tightened his grip and directed it upwards. Again, bone broke under his hand. Only this time he was too late to stop any damage being done.

He had managed to redirect the gun but had been too late to stop the bullet entirely.

The world seemed to slow as the bullet, perfectly streamlined, flew in an immaculately straight line, grazing Max's shoulder and, Ichigo was sure, the edge of her wing. She moved to the side slightly, angling her body away too late, and fell heavily to the floor.

Blood poured from her wound and began to pool beneath it.

Ichigo promptly roundhouse kicked him in the face, applying far more force than was actually needed in his anger.

She clamped her teeth together and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, clamping a hand around her shoulder and applying as much pressure as she could without hurting herself further. She sucked in as much air as she could and let it out shakily through pursed lips.

"Goddamnit." She breathed as Ichigo rushed to her side and tore the bottom of his shirt. He got her to lift her hand, trying to ignore the girl that had been in the midst of everything and the pitiful whimpering he didn't believe Max to be capable of.

The girl watched with wide eyes as the tall boy with the bright orange hair who could move faster than anyone she had ever seen before and hit harder than should have been possible crouched by the side of the girl who had been caught by the bullet, tying his makeshift shirt/bandage around her arm with a sort of expertise that didn't suit his image.

"Sorry Max." He spoke slowly and softly, finishing off the bandaging by tying a secure knot and making sure he was not doing so over the wound. "I don't have anything to clean the wound with and I doubt anywhere around here will sell it to me."

She angled her head upwards and looked at him "You know what you're doing?"

"I grew up in a clinic. This is my life."

"I guess I was right to bring you along." She spoke ruefully, averting her eyes slightly as her sentence closed.

"Will you be alright for a second?" He asked.

She nodded in response and put her hand back over the black fabric forming her bandage.

Ichigo stepped over the unconscious body of the boy with the gun, stamping on the weapon with all the force that he could and successfully rendering it unusable. Then he crouched by the broken body of the boy she had been protecting ad did what little he could in that moment with what little he had.

When he knew he could do no more he stepped towards the girl who was still sitting on the concrete, watching with unfocused eyes. He extended a hand to her, flexing his fingers and waiting with little patience for her to accept it.

Slowly, she reached upwards and allowed her own hand to clasp it. She was hauled to her feet with minimal effort from the boy whom she suddenly found herself incapable of seeing as her hair suddenly shifted to cover her eyes and obscure her vision.

"Thanks." She mumbled quietly, eyes looking everywhere but her rescuer's face. He offered no words of response, only a dismissive grunt.

"Umm." She gulped, squeezing her eyes together and subtly shaking her head "We might be able to help her a little bit more if you come back to my house." She found that the pitch of her voice was higher than usual.

He actually looked surprised. "Really?" She didn't miss the accent that coloured his voice. It was her turn to respond wordlessly, nodding her head and humming a little, still uneasy, as she moved to the girl and crouched by her side, checking the bandage.

"It's the least I can do."

"If you're sure." he sounded even more uneasy than she felt, rubbing the back of his neck with a sort of mundane awkwardness she had not been expecting after seeing him easily break several bones and punch someone so hard they literally flew backwards.

"I am." She confirmed, suddenly feeling considerably more comfortable with participating in the admittedly awkward conversation.

"Thank you." His scowl did not leave but he nodded his head slightly, showing good-naturedness rather than the reluctancy his expression would suggest. He crouched down again, taking her place by his friend as she stepped backwards.

"Can you walk?" He asked the girl on the floor who was still clutching her shoulder. When he had asked she had thought it would be a stupid question - of course she couldn't! But then she had nodded and clambered to her feet, accepting minimal help from the boy.

"Are you sure?" She had worriedly asked the girl, looking upon her with concern and checking to make sure she was not swaying on her feet "And are _you,"_ She tuned her focus back to the boy "Sure you should be letting her?"

The girl just shook her head "I don't know about you nor him," she gestured to them respectively with her uninjured arm "But I can't afford to crumble with only a single injury."

She was shocked, once again, by the pair as the boy appeared to be holding back a laugh "I'll tell you now that, if I crumbled under one injury, the odds that I would actually have made it to double-digits are worryingly slim."

"Anyway, what are we going to do about Ortiz?" She redirected the conversation in such a way it would be productive.

"Is that his name?" The girl asked, again releasing her grip on her injured arm to wave his hand in the direction of the addressed.

"Yeah."

"Hey?" She spoke to the boy this time, turning her head and eyes to make it clear who she was speaking to "You reckon that you can carry him?"

"Easily."

"Good. It's okay if we take him back to your's with us, isn't it?"

"Entirely."

"Good." The conversation died as the boy lifted Ortiz as easily as if he were a mere rag doll. He rested limply in the arms of the tall boy, appearing as though that may have been all he was.

She led the way into the forest it appeared as though her saviours had come from, following the worn dirt rail that led to her house. The dark green thicket of trees surrounding them blocked out a fair amount of light, making it seem as though it were actually later and darker than it actually was.

The awkwardness accompanying the silence that had settled over them was palpable and she was grasping for way to break it.

"I'm Ella, by the way." Eventually she was forced to resort to the simplest, most basic, perhaps the lowest, form of conversation she could think of - one she had not even remembered they had skipped entirely until she had began searching - introductions.

"Max." The injured girl spoke from the back of the group who had slowed their own pace to allow her to keep up with them.

She turned her attention to the boy who was effortlessly carrying Ortiz, now in a fireman's hold over his shoulder, and urged him to give up the same little bit of information as the two girls had.

"Ichigo." He offered reluctantly just as they approached her house.

She turned and tried to present them with a slightly more substantial conversation, or at least one that allowed for at least a little bit of personality to show through. "Welcome," She cast her hands outwards in a greatly exaggerated gesture, feeling inexplicably silly as she did "To the middle of nowhere!"


	6. Chapter 6

Slowly, Ella opened the door before stepping out of the way and watching ichigo follow suit, still effortlessly carrying Ortiz like he was a baby, allowing the injured Max to pass and enter the room. She may not have crumbled under a lone injury but there was a crimson stain spreading steadily along her clothes, barely visible on the makeshift bandage of black fabric, and blood seeping through her fingers from where she refused to remove pressure from the wound. It was only slightly there but Ichigo could see the toll the blood loss was taking n her, her movements were sluggish and her eyes fighting to stay open.

"Mum!" Ella despised the unease in her voice, the unevenness that accompanied the shout. It was as though her mother shared the sentiment, coming barrelling into the room and looking like she was fully aware something serious was wrong.

She halted for a moment, allowing her dark eyes to scan over the scene and take in what the problem may be. Then she saw it: the slow drips of blood hitting the floor and the broken form of a boy she was sure she had seen before cradled in the arms of another.

"Oh!" She rushed forwards to Max, brushing her hair from the wound and briefly instructing Ichigo to set Ortiz down on the settee.

A noise, a pitiful one that made the level of pain he was in eident, escaped ortiz's lips as he was set down, eyes clamping tighter shu and refusing to let in any light at all, even in his unconscious state. Max herself couldn't help but wince slightly as the trained hands of Valencia martinez skimmed the torn skin beneath the wrapping.

"Are you okay dear?" valencia herself was unsure whether the question was directed to the injured girl she was fussing over or her own daughter who, while physically unharmed, looked shaken.

It seemed the recipients weren't either as both, without looking at her, mumbled an uncertain "Yeah."

"You're not hurt, right Ella?" her eyes turned from max to Ella, narrowing for inspection.

"No, no."She shook her head and hands dismissively "Though I suppose they're the ones I can thank for that." She gestured to Max as she flinched away from Valencia's hands and Ichigo as he stood in the corner, trying to disappear from the room where he felt he did not belong.

She looked at the boy who had not said a word in her presence and the injured girl to whom she tended, eyes widening and softening "Thank you." Her voice softened to accompany her face "From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much." her hand shifted from max's shoulder to her hand, brushing the knuckles with her thumb in a motherly gesture that max was very much unaccustomed to, before reverting to her own side as she turned to max and decided to grasp the situation before her.

"You," her personality did a complete rotation, going from motherly to strict and professional in a moment "Come with me into the other room so I can sort this out properly." She then turned her point of focus to ichigo who was still making a conscious effort to disappear "You, can you bring Ortiz in for me? Your friend here isn't the only one who needs help. I may have to get a human medical professional, I'm a vet so humans are not my strong point."

Ella took a seat heavily on the settee the minute Ortiz was removed, following the retreating figures with uneasy eyes as she watched the odd teenagers, her friend and mother leave.

Her dog, Magnolia, came bounding in, sniffing the ground intently. She sighed; she had knowledge of what was tainting the floors and couldn't help but wonder if the dog was aware what she smelled was human blood. She assumed she may.

The dog came to a halt by her feet, sitting and tilting her head sideways, eyes wide and questioning. Ella ruffled her ears, sighing and staring straight forwards, at the wall before her rather than her beloved pet. "What's going on today?"

In the other room valencia felt as though she were going crazy. She had allowed Max's bandage to pass as it was for the moment, the boy had not done a bad job, and was tending to Ortiz who looked as though an eighteen wheeler had been unable to discern him from the road it travelled.

"What happened to him?" She asked the girl for it seemed the boy was socially inept, not uttering a single word since he had arrived.

"Just some bullies," She spoke bitterly "Though they might have been something worse, I'm not sure."

"I'll say." She shook her head "From the looks of it, you got grazed by a gunshot."

"I've met worse," the boy with hair the colour of a mandarin spoke "It was my fault I couldn't stop them from getting to you." The accent with which he spoke elicited some curiosity in valencia but, at the time, it was hidden beneath a strong sense of worry and a slight relief in knowing the boy was simply not the most social as opposed to incapable of socialising sufficiently.

"It wasn't." The injured girl insisted strongly, voice not at all kind. "You stopped him from killing me and, as far as I'm concerned, that in itself is a miracle."

"It's not." He shook his head, removed his hands from his pockets and crossed them tightly across his chest, ever present scowl making him appear regretful rather than irritated as his eyebrows drew inwards "I've faced worse and moved faster, I'm out of practice and it's showing. I guess a training session with Geta-Boushi might not be as unwelcome right now as I'd like for it to be." the last sentence was a rueful one, yet a mildly humorous one that was clearly only meant to be understood by himself. For the time being no one questioned it.

"You're impossible." the other participant within the conversation showed no signs of a willingness to give up "but we've got time to argue about this if we have to." She straightened her back and crossed her arms as the boy had, face contorted in defiancy as she stared at him unwaveringly through what must have been excruciating pain that was surely flooding her body by this point "It," She stressed each syllable she spoke "Was," she moved one arm to jab a finger in her face the same insistent way he would "Not," She grit her teeth and arched her eyebrows unattractively but expressively "Your," She rose to her foot and approached him tauntingly, no sign of weakness appearing in her stance "Fault." She was touching his shoulder ow, grasping it with one hand as she kept the other pointing at his face.

Gently, he pushed her backwards, freeing himself to move to another corner as his had been infiltrated "Oh but it was." He sunk down against the wall, long legs resting beneath his chin as he leant back in a way that showed frustration rather than a state of relaxedness.

"Why are you so stubborn?" She did not move towards him or the seat she had earlier occupied, instead leaning her own weight against the wall, still upright.

"I think it'd be better if we were to have that discussion when you aren't in danger of bleeding out."

Valencia hummed her agreement as she glanced upwards, finishing off the tying of the last bandage and moving to guide the girl back to her seat.

"You know," It was a meagre attempt to diffuse the unpleasant tension building up between the two teenagers "I don't think we've actually introduced ourselves yet."

"You know," The girl spoke through a light smile "Ella used the exact same way of starting a conversation. It's not hard to see you're related." Her smile stretched out a little bit more, slightly unnervingly in the eyes of Valencia who was being forced to acknowledge how inhumanly robust the girl was proving herself "I'm Max and he" She gestured to the boy who had buried his head in his arms, folded over his knees "Is, aside from antisocial," he raised his head to sneer at her, scoffing before resuming his previous position "Is Ichigo."

"'Sup?" He mumbled in a futile attempt to socialise, response muffled as he spoke to the floor.

Valencia almost laughed but quickly drew herself back into the reality of the situation.

"Max, sorry but I'm going to need to see this wound a bit better." She gently moved a finger around the wound, on skin she was sure had not been injured "So, Ichigo, would you mind stepping out for a second? I'm sure Ella can entertain you."

Wordlessly, he rose, stretching momentarily and making the vet cringe as she heard what was surely an unnatural number of pops as he stretched out his limbs. He strode out of the room, opening the door and not wasting anytime in leaving,listening to the hinges creak as he stood in the hallway outside, eyes scanning for Ella's presence. He didn't see her but he did hear a tap running and a dog barking from the settee.

It was beside the dog he took tentative seat, absentmindedly stroking its ears as he allowed his vision to travel consistently and quickly from one door to another, waiting for some progression in the situation that had very quickly taken an extreme turn for the worst in ways he had not predicted but had learnt, through many unfortunate situations he'd rather not have to endure again, to always be expecting.

Then he heard it.

There was a noise, high, a shriek, that melted into a gasp as quickly as it hd started. That was something he had very much been predicting, something he knew could not be avoided. It was valencia, no doubt she had discovered the, shall we say, less human additions Max had.

"Ichigo!" He'd be lying if he said he was not as ready for that as he had be the initial surprise. He stood again, sighing.

The door creaked again as he pushed it open, the sound scarce heard amid valencia's relentless questioning and Max's worried though not quite so urgent responses. She turned to him the second she noticed he was there.

"Jacket." Valencia ws entirely unwilling o waste time, desperate for answers in the seemingly sempiternal web of queries that had abruptly sprung up around her "Now."

She already new about Max's wings and if he refused he would still be supplying he with an answer.

He shrugged the jacket off. He slung the fabric over one arm, standing his ground firmly in the doorway and making no moves to indicate a willingness to move further forwards towards her.

Suppressing the slight urge to smirk, he tensed the muscles in his back the way he was familiar with, feeling the uncomfortable cramp lessen and ruffling his wings. Behind him a single orange feather drifted to the floor. Slowly it fell, as though only to taunt Valencia as she suddenly found herself unable to speak anylonger. The black of the base was clear, illuminated by the yellow glow of the artificial light filling the room before him, the white less so and the orange entirely unmissable as he did something she would not have expected.

He shuffled forwards, flicking the wings from which she could not avert her eyes out to the sides and extending them as far as he surroundings would allow, thankful for the slits cut in his shirt and relishing the feeling of being able to stretch.

"What are you gonna do?" Valencia did not miss the challenge present in his tone, accepting it "Call the police? Some professional research team? The circus perhaps?"

"What? Why would I do that? I want answers." She looked up at the teenager, holding uncomfortable eye contact with a stern refusal to blink.

"Of course you do." Valencia would never find out if he had been planning on continuing the train of speech he had began, if the lull had been a pause or an end. It was disrupted. As he spoke the water shut off and a door could be heard slamming. Before anything else could happen a familiar voice, though the source was hidden spoke out, displaying an apt amount of entirely justifiable confusion. "What," Ichigo skipped to the side, folding wings, not even fully extended, back down so they rested flatly against his back "The," He hurriedly slipped the jacket over his arms and shrugged it onto his shoulders, tugging the collar "Hell," Valencia's mind was beginning to race with as many valid responses as possible, a difficult task when her own lack of knowledge is accounted for "Is," Ichigo found refuge in the corner of the room, into which he shrunk, cast in a shadow that hid all but a smear of orange, once again "Happening?" Max sat frozen, wings twitching as her mouth opened and closed fruitlessly, otherwise unable to move, rooted to the spot in which she sat.

"I can explain" Max was lying, she knew full well she couldn't.

Ichigo had the nerve to allow a single bark of laughter fill the room as it was plunged into a silence that spoke of a million things at once "Well,I mean, by all means try," It wasn't quite a finished sentence, trailing off as though there were more to it when there was clearly no intention to continue.

Back in the same city the flock had found the origins of their journey there was another one, another traveller at the beginning of a trip. This trip was to the same place as their own: Germany. However, there was a varying intention.

This traveller had no positive intention, only a wish to change everything.

The red suitcase rolled over the white floor tiles, the accompanying noise drowning among a sea of those near identical.

The clicking of a tongue, a mutter disappearing amongst the commotion of the crowds that flocked in all sorts of disorganisation, travelling in contrasting directions and competing for freedom of movement, their shouted attempts to be heard amongst others who had the same idea blocked out the message the traveller had only for themselves. There was absolutely no intent to communicate the message to anyone else.

"Such an ugly colour. Perhaps, later, after, I can paint it red?"

 **A/N I sincerely apologize for how long it has been, I've been having some trouble writing this chapter and even now it's a short one. Still, it's something. I won't lie, I'm still not entirely happy with this and my initial plans did include ending the little union with Alla and Valencia in this chapter but I just couldn't quite get it to work how I wanted it to. Also, I'd like to address the Ortiz/Ortez thing someone helpfully left in a review I could not directly respond to. Thank you for pointing that out. i thin I've mentioned it before but I'm terrible at typing and, seeing as the keys are nowhere near each other, I'm not even going to try to pretend I know how I made that mistake.**

 **Anyway, from here on this is just going to be a bit of idle chat so there is absolutely no reason to read the rest of this A/N if you don't want to. Is anyone familiar with Eyeshield 21? If so, you know Yamato? Unconsciously, I keep wanting to read his name as yamamoto even though I know it's not but, if I'm not focusing, my mind keeps reading it that way.**

 **Also, i would like to say sports anime/manga is a very deep pit I don't think I can climb out of (thank you Hiakyuu!) and Kuroko no Basuke is incredible and I finished it far too quickly and am regretting that I have none left now.**

 **So, goodbye for now, I will have the next chapter up faster than this one (I promise).**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	7. Chapter 7

The harsh light flickered on and off. The artificial light faltered and flickered, fizzling with a crackle before dying and staying there for a moment before flitting back into the light and repeating. It glinted on something slick on the ground, something smeared from one surface to the next.

Then the light fizzled out entirely.

In the grey of the miserable night a figure drifted away, slow but smiling contentedly as it made its leave. By the time the scene was left alone it was unsettling but inconspicuous.

Ella rushed through her house, mind a jumbled mess, hazy and disoriented. She could think of nothing but Max and ichigo, of their avian DNA and their stories that could fill novels. But there was also the doubt, with ichigo more so than Max, that the whole story had actually been gifted to her ears. She didn't feel as though she had been lied to, moreso that certain aspects of the truth had been withheld. She already knew about his wings, could there possibly be something worse to hide?

When she had woken up that morning she had gone into the kitchen to eat breakfast, seeing ichigo already there and wide awake, sipping on black coffee that was still steaming violently. He seemed to have either found something or been leant it by her mother as, while he leant on the counter, he read a work of Shakespeare he held high with one hand. She may have laughed a the oddness she found in the normalcy of it all but she could see a slight twitch, a flash of white, behind his back she definitely recognised from the fiasco of the day before.

Max was still asleep, crashed on the settee and looking almost as though she were going to fall onto the rug laid out on the livingroom floor. Her shoulder was wrapped tightly in bandages that would need cleaning but were certainly cleaner than the scraps of the t-shirt Valencia had gladly changed for Ichigo after tending to the wounds of the injured. Ortiz had ended up in the hospital and valencia had ended up sitting on the phone for a lengthy conversation with his parents that she seemed to enjoy none too much.

She could focus on none of that though, instead exclusively on the seemingly endless sea of oddities surrounding the two. It was almost laughable to think she was slinging the same old overstuffed school bag over her back as she always did, rushing out of the door to catch the bus at the last second as she always did, and then spending the day trying to focus on the work she would otherwise enjoy. The difference was what the distraction that may prevent that was. It had gone from the usual bullies and worry about Ortiz (though she would not deny that part still being there) to worry about illegal genetic alterations on children and two of those kids who were actually the "lucky ones" amongst such a group. The very thought was enough to make her feel slightly ill if she thought about it for too long.

Her mother had also been strange amongst the abnormal happenings. She was almost too calm and had, despite animals being her speciality, treated the wound on Max's wings with a far less than appropriate level of surprise.

The little school bus pulled up outside her house as she ran along the sidewalk, dizzy with the myriad of thoughts somersaulting around in her mind. It stopped and the local kids boarded. She ran in last, bag flying out behind her and thumping heavily onto her back when she stopped to avoid barrelling into the back of the boy in front of her.

Heavily, she fell into an empty seat, shifting across to the sat by the window and hoping no one would take the seat next to hers.

She wasn't so lucky.

She listened to the rhythmic humming of the old engine, of the dated vehicle travelling over the uneven roads. She listened to the jumbled jargon of many conversations melding into one, of music blaring too loudly from the headphones of kids who clearly had no regard for their hearing. It was comforting.

At least until they stopped again, the engine shutting off, the bus drawing to an abrupt halt and everyone instinctively quieting their conversations. A few more people piled in, all male and much larger than her. There were three of them.

Each was injured and gruff-looking, walking with an innate sense of superiority. There was also a sense of familiarity that struck her. One took a seat by a small girl who intently kept ther bespectacled eyes trained on her novel, listening to the music playing in her ears and trying to ignore the boy beside her who seemed to be occupying more of the shared seat with every passing second. Another settled himself beside the boy she had almost bumped into earlier, instantly kicking the boy's bag into the aisle as he sat and using half of the poor boy's chair in addition to his own. The other boy looked at him through narrowed eyes, gritting his teeth and quietly hissing as he seethed. He went unnoticed. The third, the one who had hurt Max before, sat next to her, not invading her space too much but ensuring she knew she could not crawl back out into the aisle by occupying the space between his chair and the one in front. He calmly and tauntingly ran his hand over a hidden pocket in his large jacket, making a noise that could almost be called a purr as he smiled with crooked teeth and narrowed eyes oe simply could not bring themselves to trust.

Nonchalantly, innocently, he swung his leg, knee hitting hers, a constant reminder of his less than welcome, imposing presence. He whispered menacingly in a hoarse voice, not phased by her presence as neither Max nor Ichigo was there to protect her. She couldn't help but think the boys would be far less cocky and overbearing if they sa even a glimpse of that telltale orange they were sure to recognise - they were bearing the evidence of their encounter.

"Not got ginger and girly here to protect you, huh?" She didn't know if she would really consider the luminous yellow of ichigo's hair ginger.

She pretended she had not heard.

Thankfully the seating arrangement did not last too long and she was soon free of the imposing presence of the delinquent bullies whom she was convinced had retaken multiple grades.

The day passed with no further complications and, by the end of the day, she found herself almost indescribably impatient to go home; she was positively itching to grill the bird-kids further.

When she got home max and ichigo were sitting side by side on the settee, not really seeming to notice each other and staring silently at the TV in front of them. The image flickered across the old unit, screen slightly fuzzy.

Max looked lost, stuck in her mind and staring blankly forwards. Ichigo looked less lost, more like he was actually listening to the TV that was playing quite quietly. She slung her bag down against the wall and looked at the TV.

It wasn't pleasant.

The news was playing, a woman with bleached blonde hair relaying the story of the latest of the murders committed by the anonymous serial killer: Kille Inconnu. It was slightly frightening to think the latest of the murders committed by the killer who was known for striking in new York had happened in Arizona, not too far from where she lived.

They had designated the victim as theirs the moment they saw the crime scene, the tell tale symbol was there, marring the mutilated body of the victim. Said victim was lying in a pool of blood that had painted the entire alleyway, most of which was not hers. Or so the news said. That left one question on the mind of every viewer. Who was this other victim?

Shrugging and tring to loosen up her shoulders, she walked into the kitchen where she was almost certain she'd find her mother. She was right.

Valencia was stood, hunched over the counter and staring intently down at a piece of paper. With a smile even she was not sure about the sincerity of, Ella waltzed over and plucked the sheet from the clean surface, holding it in front of her and reading it as she continued to spi and potter about the room so her mum could not read while she did.

"Cool," she stopped and smiled, returning the paper to her giggling mother's chosen surface "Cookies."

Valencia hummed happily "Yeah. Would you want to get Max and ichigo in here? They sound like they wouldn't be opposed to a little fun at this point."

"Max _did_ look very bored." She reasoned "But ichigo looked kind engrossed in the news report."

"Oh." Valencia wasn't particularly aware of any teenagers who tended to find news interesting "What about."

"Murder." Ella admitted.

"Fun!" Valencia insisted, shooing her daughter.

Ella perched herself on the arm of the settee to the side of max that wasn't injured, tapping her shoulder and hoping she hadn't touched her uninjured wing, unaware of whether or not that would be considered polite in whatever weird world she had found herself being dragged into by her saviours.

"Hey."

"Hi." Max responded, turning her head from where she was staring blankly at the telly "Anything you need?"

"My mum was wondering if you'd like to help us make cookies?"

Max almost laughed "How about I watch _you_ make cookies _?_ Iggy's the one who usually does our cooking and he won't let me touch food unless I'm eating it."

"How about Ichigo?" Ella couldn't help but laugh a little herself.

"I don't know." She admitted "I don't know nearly as much about him as I'd like." she stood up, rolling her bad shoulder and wincing as she did so. "You're going to have to actually ask him." She sent her eyes to him, still staring intently at the woman with the bleached blonde hair as the story seemed to stretch on eternally "if you can get his attention off of that." She added as an afterthought.

Ella laughed again, still intimidated by the boy with the luminous hair. She paused by his side by a moment, hesitating with whether or not to shake him to physically jarr him from his concentrated state. She decided against it, instead choosing to reach for the remote resting by his elbow. She never reached it.

Before she knew what was happening her hand was stopped, held in place by another that had reached out almost as if on instinct.

Ichigo looked at her for a moment before sheepishly withdrawing his arm, glancing at hes briefly to be sure he hadn't gripped hard enough to bruise - he often underestimated his own strength and that was not such a bad thing in the life he had led as it may have been once.

"Sorry." he had turned his eyes away from hers to speak "If someone is trying to sneak up on me they are either my father trying to "polish my reflexes" or someone who seriously, _seriously,_ would rather have me dead. Either way I'm kind of programmed to react and the former's not even possible anymore."

It's fine," She held her own wrist, moving t around and trying to regain some of the feeling se had lost, watching as the red marks paled and blended "I was just wondering if you'd like to make some cookies with me and my mum?"

"Surprisingly I can actually cook,"

Max interrupted him "You can?"

"Yes. My sister was better but she's younger than me, my dad can't cook for shit and you don't trust kids as young as my sisters were when my mum died around a hot oven. It was either I learn to cook, my dad burned the house down, or we ate takeout every night." He addressed Max before turning back to Ella "That said, I've never actually made cookies."

Ella gaped at him. "You're kidding?"

"Like I said, I cooked for necessity rather than baked for fun. Besides, I'm better with my local cuisine than yours."

"Local cuisine?" Ella asked.

He cocked his head "Have we not been over this? Max." he called upon her to explain.

"Talked too much for one day? It's Japan right?"

"Mmm." he confirmed

"Well that's interesting. Now, let's go teach you how to make cookies while Max watches."

Somehow Valencia had roped Max into helping, an idea that had quickly proved itself to be a bad one. Ichigo was laughing at her as she stood there, covered in cookie dough with flour dusted in her hair and smeared across her face.

"How?" he managed to ask through the complete loss of the composure she had not once seen him without.

"There's a reason Iggy won't let me touch the stove with a ten foot pole." She reasoned, waving her hands through the air and creating what was almost a fog of flour.

"Speaking of," Ichigo went back to scowling "We need to meet up with the flock again don't we?"

"Yeah. Valencia?" The woman in question hmmed when addressed, suppressing her own laughter at Max's state "When will I be able to fly again?"

"You should be good to go tomorrow morning."

"Fang's not gonna be happy." Ichigo teased.

"Do you just not realise how similar you two are sometimes?"

"We aren't." He sounded slightly taken aback at her suggestion.

"You're in denial."

"And you're covered in flour."

As the sun rose behind a series of clouds ella found herself stumbling around her house, only half awake and not entirely conscious as to why she was p so terribly early when it was a weekend. To ensure she avoided tumbling she refused to walk without one hand on the wall at all times.

To Ichigo, Max and Valencia it was a funny sight.

They were waiting for her outside, beneath the streaked sky. When she saw them, with a yawn, Ella seemed to egain her ability to process thought and memory.

Then she spent a moment staring up, entranced by the sky as it moved past leisurely, paying no attention to them or anyone else as it had no need, the sun got higher and higher. She could imagine Ichigo and Max soaring up in that sky, eventually fading into silhouettes as they flew further and further away, wingspans dwarfing their actual figures. She hadn't thought of it up until then, but they really were, should she look over their so called 'origin stories', a fair bit alike to the angels one of the flock members had chosen her name after.

Max had removed the bandage and was stretching out her wings tentatively, feeling for the bit that had been grazed and being glad when it hardly hurt at all, only slightly stinging. Te had to marvel the full beauty of the view she had earlier been deprived of, of Max's elegant hazel wings, stretched out fully, feathers ruffled by the wind, image completed by the movement of her hair as it danced along the breeze.

Ichigo watched her as she gaped, cocking and eyebrow and shrugging and rolling his shoulders. His shoulders popped as they did before before he unfurled his own wings, substantially larger than Max's as he was to her.

Ella didn't really wish to consider how uncomfortable it must be for one to have to keep wings folded as tightly as the did for as long as they did. Surely their muscles would have to be aching something terrible.

Both readied themselves to leave, to find their group of people who had similar situations to them, but ella stopped them. She delayed them with a shout "Will I see you again?"

"Can't promise." ichigo admitted.

Max picked up from his statement despite him clearly being done with it "But we can try."

The wind picked up and their wings began to beat, lifting them from the ground with steady, fluid movements that seemed as natural to them as walking to her.

Just as she predicted, their clear figures became hazy until they were mere shadows in the sky until, at last, the disappeared entirely and she was waving enthusiastically at nothing.

In the darkness of the night, it was a difficult task; to fill transportable containers with the sticky scarlet liquid that stained the ground right down to the miniscule cracks lining the pavements and the gaps beneath the raised stones. But it had to be clean.

Meticulous plans were not their favourite, neither to plan nor to carry out. But it didn't matter. It was crucial, crucial that this be executed immaculately.

It was for the greater good. The preservation would have to begin, the preservation of both bodies and blood. The secrecy must improve.

They held the containers before their face, watching as the fluid sloshed around, entranced in their viewing with a perverse amount of fascination.

The ground was perfectly clean, very little evidence left. Not that evidence mattered, for a long while they had left things to lie, purposely left clues as a test, but they had been missed by these so called professionals who had access to more technology than they knew existed. They were toying with the police before they could begin their plan, before the revolution could begin. They had been waiting tirelessly for the red to saturate the world, to drain out any other colour and replace it. It was all they wanted to see; that overwhelming colour that could cover as much as it could, that could hide so many wrongdoings but highlight overs. Just like it highlighted their own. It was evidence after all, a clue purposely left like a highlighted not on a page. They never acted without reason, they did not change that.


	8. Chapter 8

Sharp eyes picked up the silhouettes of two of their own approaching after days as equally sharp ears picked up on the rhythmic beating of their wings. They had settled into a 'camp', actually just an outcropping in a cliff face, in which they spent the night. They spent the day lingering by the local shop, small and rundown but helpful to them, tainted with the overwhelming scent of machinery from the cars and MOT next to it.

Fang pushed his way to the forefront of the group, eyes squinting upwards, not bothering to shield them from the sun. He was angry, he was confused, he was relieved. He was an awful lot.

When the two figures disappeared from view eyes were turned from the sky to the surrounding woodland, from which the same couple of figures emerged.

Fang approached without missing a beat, reaching to grab the taller of the two by the collar of his shirt (was that a different one from the ne he had been wearing when Fang last saw him?). The attempt failed when his own hand was blocked by another.

"What?" A displeased voice hissed through a scowl.

"What?" Fang couldn't believe he'd really ask that, it was obvious! "What! Perhaps that you've been missing for two fricking days without a single shitty word! The fact that you seem so unconcerned with this! The fact you left me to take care of the flock!"

He scoffed in response. "Max got shot." He said it so casually it took a while for Fang to process it.

"What?"

"Now you're doing it." The scowl broke to be replaced with a condescending smirk that melted as quickly as it came "Asking 'what' when there's really not much to be asked."

"Shut up! Shit, why are you so calm? I knew we couldn't trust you!"

"Fang!" Max interrupted as she grew tired of staring at the opposition of scowling faces. "He didn't do anything! We were helping a girl, I got careless, Ichigo tried to help me. He saved me."

Fang took a turn to scoff. He told Ichigo "Don't you dare think I'm done with you." he turned on his heel as he departed, fuming as he heard Ichigo respond sarcastically.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Following the argument that left Fang steaming and isolating himself, Nudge jumped in with the barrage of questions, the bombardment that was characteristic of her. Iggy listened quietly as Gazzy seemed to find humour in the retelling where there was none present. Angel just stared, wide eyes slightly obscured by strands of spun gold that fell in immaculate ringlets. The guard of the newest member looked to be entirely depleted, he was absorbed in Max's retelling of the story he had experienced alongside her.

She tried to force herself into his mind again, tried as hard as she could to do something she never found herself struggling to do to anyone else. This time around there was a visage to accompany the presence that entirely overwhelmed her.

It was familiar but not, it was both entirely normal and entirely wrong.

The face she saw was bleach white, eyebrows familiarly knitted and mouth, as usual, determinedly pointed downwards. But the eyes were the most unsettling, gold and glinting in a light that wasn't there.

Then it opened its mouth (for, despite the resemblance it bore, he could not find the humanity in it needed to bestow upon it human pronouns), Ichigo's mouth, and spoke in a rasping voice that echoed and reverberated in her ears and the negative space surrounding them.

"Stop trying to be nosey. King won't be happy with you if I tell him."

Even in her mentality, Angel gulped and retreated, withdrawing from the emptiness of the mental world she and the awful face inhabited.

Unsettlingly and worryingly, as she returned to the world in front of her (from which her absence had not been prolonged), there was a set of eyes trained on her. The eyes were narrow and cold, analytic and staring at her knowingly. Awfully, she could swear, beneath the dimming natural light, those eyes were flickering from brown to gold, the surrounding skin periodically paling.

They decided unanimously to make their leave after Fang, to his own insistence, checked to make sure Max's wing was in working order. Angel watched as those eyes, again, did not falter, even as the face they were settled in scoffed, even as the owner moved, took flight.

Ichigo continued to keep his cold gaze settled on Angel, even as they flew. She almost wanted to fall straight from the sky. Her wings ached, her toes curled, she felt very uneasy.

And she was the one who had claimed Ichigo as one of them.

She wasn't saying she regretted the decision, more so she should have taken more caution.

Much more.

She couldn't help but think the person flying beside her was dangerous even if he hadn't proven himself untrustworthy. She was guiltily aware of how invasive and perverse it was to force her way into someone else's mind without first gaining permission but the fact that, even when his guard was down completely, Ichigo's mind was an impenetrable fortress was terrifying. For that to be the case - was he hiding something?

* * *

There was little noise: the gentle, occasional clinking of metal instruments; the rare pattering of faraway footsteps; the pained, pitiful whining and whimpering of the children who were more than, caged in tiny enclosures not fit for any living creature.

It was inhumane and those punished for nothing who lay, trapped and mistreated, were not merely human any longer. Well, at least the successes: those who had gone wrong were either dying or dead.

There was no colour, red or otherwise. There was no happiness either, how could there be in such an absence of that crimson. Eve as a child they had noticed how odd and fascinating it was the colour red represents love and blood, to an extremity, even death.

Not a single eye turned in suspicion as they passed, crossing floors and passing walls f the same dreadful colour or absence of. They smiled to that same awful floor as they passed.

They were here and they would wait.

* * *

Ichigo had always thought white was a worse colour that black, that it was absurd that white was related to purity whereas black was linked to death and all manner of things people didn't like to think about. He was aware, from personal experience, that black was very strongly related to death, the colour that clothed the Shinigami, but that white was too and just what side of death the two not-quite-colours represented was knowledge he had but most didn't. His mother had been wearing white when she had died, when he had awoken, disoriented and with her dead body cast over him. The white sheet covered her and others as the ambulances came to take them away to morgues, to declare them medically dead.

White was the colour of the hollow he had thought was terrorising him for so long, the one he had had to fight for control. White was death to him - he wasn't entirely certain just what black was.

He didn't care at that moment.

He woke up with no memory of having fallen asleep, surrounded by a sempiternal stretch of white that drowned him. His eyes found nothing, not a corner nor shadow to distinguish one thing from another, to give relief from the white.

There was a hissing sound, a sound that was semi-human but not quite. There was an image that began to flash as his eyes turned downwards, an image he had seen before.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

He opened them to a world drenched in red.

Then, as fast as it had come, everything changed. He still did not remember having fallen asleep but was surrounded by a number of sleeping bodies, in a place he recognised from the brief amount of time he had spent in it before falling asleep.

He felt cold despite the heat, like there were icecubes pressed against his back that strictly refused to melt. There was a shiver running through him unrelentingly.

He stood in the dark, admiring the black that gave him reprieve from the white that had flooded his mind just moments before. Careful not to wake anyone, he stepped around stones and bodies, exciting into the warm, humid air of the night.

They had been flying all day but his wings did not ache from overuse, they ached to be used, just as his mind ached to escape, even if just for a little bit. He stood for a moment, on the outcropping on another cliff, on which actual birds found home. He glanced at them for a moment as a bird returned home to her nest, flying away as she flew in.

He flew above the sleeping town he had not taken in earlier.

He had been preoccupied before, with the presence in his mind,that gentle ache that he felt sometimes around the flock. But he had an inkling then on what that aching was, call it a suspicion. And it was not a good thought. The flock were all he had now and, if they would not allow him to earn their trust, if they were so stubbornly refusing to trust him even after he had saved Max.

He felt betrayed but he knew better than anyone how dangerous it was to trust blindly, to withdraw all suspicion. He was more aware than most of how much danger he could do, any outsider could do, to a group as tightknit and out-of-the-ordinary as the flock's.

He landed on the otdopping again as the sun began to rise in the sky behind him, stained with the pretty pastel colours that streaked it with little rhyme or reason. He had had nearly no sleep but was not tired, he sat by the edge of area, back pressed against the rough rock, wings extended only slightly by his sides. He watched the sleeping figures of the flock twitch and fidget in their sleep, Angel kicked her brother who, even in his sleep retaliated with a harder kick back; Fang was curled up in the foetal position in the darkest corner available, lying there like a dead man; Iggy, ever the first to wake, was beginning to stir, his blank eyes fluttering open before closing for a while and fluttering again.

Just as Iggy began to gain the energy to pull himself into full consciousness Ichigo realised what the symbol that had flashed through his blood-soaked dream was, or, more accurately, where he had seen it before.

Kille Inconnu.

That monster, he one he entirely refused to believe to be human, at least mentally was everywhere. Everywhere he went that killer followed, along with him came the crime scenes as bloodsoaked as his dream.

Perhaps the monster was planning something? Perhaps the monster knew of him or the flock and was haunting them diligently? That was not the greatest of thoughts, not that he often had those that were.

"Great." he muttered to himself "I escape hell in multiple senses of the word and now I think I'm on the ferry back into it. Charon and I are old friends by now, I'm sure."

* * *

As they flew over town after town, each melding into the next with little difficulty, the bright colours of the vibrant houses and the mass of trees smushing into one unappealing mess. It was freeing to be able to fly, to be able to travel faster and further than on foot. But it was also distancing.

As noon passed by, the clock ticking on at almost incredible rates, the sky darkened. Grey began to fall from the heavens, thick, low clouds, some almost as black as the robes worn by shinigami, pelted rain down like a bombardment from the opposition.

Ichigo supposed it was kind of the opposition - did anyone _like_ rain?

They were nowhere near their destination, the one they never once seemed to approach. Even so, Angel and Gazzy were both growing exhausted and lagging behind. They had to stop for a rest soon.

They did as the town blended into the next.

Well, it was more of a city, a large one at hat. The green was gone, replaced with dull greys and whites. _Ichigo hated white._

They wandered for a while before finding a park, in it benches onto which Gazzy and Angel gratefully fell. Nudge never seemed to be tired, continuing to run around, blabbing a string of questions that crossed the line into jargon. Ichigo stood against his tree, leaning backwards into it with his hands in his pockets. Fang had chosen the tree furthest away from ichigo's the youngest flock members and the, no matter how much she denied it, injured leader: Max.

Something cold met ichigo's fingers, colder than the rain that chilled the warm air.

He scrunched his eyebrows a little and pulled it out. There were a few coins resting in his palm, nothing exciting nor valuable. He was about to put the coins back into his pocket when he saw an elderly lady sitting beneath the onslaught of rain, no shelter, shivering like a hypothermic, cradling a stack of newspapers to her chest, dutifully protecting them from the rain with her body.

He walked over, ignoring the dark, untrusting eyes that trailed him and the excited, babbling questions that did the same. He stood in front of the woman who started a bit at the scowling youth with the unpleasant facial expression, radically coloured hair, cold eyes and unwelcoming poster who stood before her, hand extended with a stack of coins placed in it. He managed to wordlessly communicate what he wanted. Suddenly, she smiled widely, revealing a fw missing teeth. She picked a few of the coins from the top of the pile and offered a newspaper. That day's was not the greatest. The cover was gruesome and people, scared or curious, reacted in one of two possible extremities. Kille Inconnu was near.

Ichigo almost scoffed as he saw the ever present name again.

He shook his head. "No." She started again and he decided it was probably best to elaborate on what he meant "Take it, I don't need it." he paused for a second as she deliberated "Though I would like the newspaper."

"Of course." She smiled again, picking up the coins that jingled as they were transported from his palm to hers. She too spoke with an accent, albeit a widely different one.

Ichigo waved at her as he walked back to his tree, flipping open the newspaper and folding the half he was not reading back onto itself as he read, with a great sigh and inexplicable sense of dread and unease, about Kille Inconnu and the latest act of the monster.


	9. Chapter 9

Thunder clapped overhead, masking Gazzy's gentle snoring as it drifted on the cold, violent wind from the park bench. Angel lay next to him, curled up and asleep, blonde hair so soaked it looked more brown.

Ichigo wasn't quite sure whether the tree he sat under was sheltering him from the rain or just making things worse as a series of large droplets of water hit the paper in his hands, lightly smearing the ink as he tried diligently to read the article that was growing ever more intelligible. Still, it was important - it would be a feat to call the article uninteresting when it was about a serial killer, especially the one that felt _too_ familiar to him.

Sure, the leaves of the tree shielded most the water from going straight onto him but it all combined eventually into the fat drops that rapidly rolled off the leaves, splattering as they made contact with a solid surface.

His hair was soaked and beginning to flatten, random strands of orange crossing his vision as he studied the smeared page. Then a hand landed on his shoulder, making him shiver as the soaked fabric of his, perhaps not seasonally appropriate, t-shirt was pressed against his skin.

"Whatcha reading?" A very familiar voice asked in sing-song.

"I'm _trying_ to read a newspaper." His eyes drifted to the spot in which the old woman had stood. She wasn't there anymore; not that he could blame her, the rain was only getting worse and they were the only ones there - there wasn't much business.

"What about?" Nudge leaned over his shoulder, looking down at the writing but not actually making an effort to read it.

"Kille Inconnu."

She hummed a little as she sat down by his side "The murderer?"

"The very same."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

She huffed "You don't speak enough - tell me more!"

"What is there to say?"

"I don't know." She pondered for a moment, running her hands through her hair and noticing how much it had grown with the absorption of the moisture abundant in the air. "Ah!" She clicked her fingers "Is it interesting?"

"I suppose."

She tutted "Why?"

"Why wouldn't it be? Sure, it's not the most pleasant but how would it be boring? The speculations are quite interesting to hear, I'm not sure how accurate their theorising is, though."

"There you go." She smiled brightly.

"Hmm?"

"You finally gave me a comprehensive response!"  
"So I did."

"And we're back to square one."

"I wasn't aware we had ever left it."

They continued like that for a while, talking menially as Nudge tried to get more proper answers out of ichigo. It was hard, he seemed intent on finishing the article before the page became nothing more than an unintelligible smudge and she knew he wasn't the most talkative person ever.

Max glanced over to watch them, taking her eyes off of her sleeping flock members for a moment. She was very aware of how Ichigo could be perceived as untrustworthy, she was a little put out herself when she thought about it. The conversation wasn't particularly reassuring when she thought about it - he was so unwilling to open up about anything, if there was a reason it couldn't be a good one.

But he had saved her when she had been shot, he hadn't hesitated to try to protect her and had fought alongside her when they had decided to come to Ella's aid. Perhaps she should try to convince the rest of the flock he wasn't bad news?

But when she looked at Angel she saw her face and began to doubt again. The blonde girl had woken up and had gone straight to looking at Ichigo as Nudge continued to press questions onto him, she was twisting her features, her expression curious and her focused eyes untrusting.

Eventually the rain let up and they began to move after Gazzy had decided he was adequately rested. They traversed the city on foot, deciding it was probably best as it would use less energy than flying and it was a pretty busy area once the weather decided to be a bit kinder, they would have to fly rather high to avoid being spotted and the air up there would be thin and the temperature significantly colder than what would typically be perceived as comfortable.

They had to walk past what was presumably the busiest subsection of the city. The area in which most of the branded shops and other various commercial businesses was bustling with people, much more than the small park in the pouring rain. There were few kind-looking old men and women who smiled at them, a few more who did so before faltering when they saw two the unapproachable and silently seething members of the group who, after being trapped in the centre of their group together, were glaring at each other and looking rather like the delinquents they were clearly being perceived as. There were some kids about their age who glanced at them curiously as they walked around, soaked and probably looking like they could do with more food, sleep, and hygiene.

Max unconsciously picked at a clump of dried mud that stood out amongst her fair hair. Nudge tied to smooth down her hair, suddenly aware of how it looked after receiving a judgmental look from a passing group of young teenage girls.

Iggy was just overwhelmed. He couldn't see, he never could, and his hearing was being bombarded with too many noises for him to be able to make sense of any one of them. He clasped his pale hand around Max's shoulder. Her fingers ghosted his. She didn't mind, even if Iggy was her age, she was like the surrogate mother to the flock (sans its newest member) and having him trust her like that was like a declaration of trust.

 _Trust._

There was that word again and she didn't know quite what to do with it. She glanced over to Ichigo,his highlighter-hair making him easy to spot as well as the subject of plethora of odd glances from strangers, still glaring at Fang and getting a glare back in response. Then her glance drifted to Fang.

She thought for a moment: maybe the reason they were so doubtful of ichigo was his clashin with Fang? They had all known Fang for forever, maybe his doubts had eventually become theirs?

Angel looked up at Max, gripping her hand a little harder in her own. She saw her leader glancing at the boys and winced again. She couldn't look at Ichigo anymore without seeing _that._ For a mere fraction of a second with each passing glance the boy's face flickered white, his eyes went old too but that lasted a bit longer. It was almost like his eyes had permanently gone from brown to gold in her eyes, the glinting metallic color piercing through everything until it reached her and sliced right through her.

She shivered. She could swear she could hear the harsh, coarse laughter of that monster as she forced herself to look away. When she blinked she could swear she could still see gold…

The crowd began to thicken and Ichigo and Fang still refused to break their gaze. Well, at least until a stranger hurrying through the crowd, head tilted downwards and face hidden by a hood, carting around a bright red suitcase.

Something made ichigo shudder as the person rushed past, never looking up, not apologising, just rushing.

He later realised that the person, from head to toe, had been dressed in the same obnoxious colour as their luggage.

Screw white, you know what Ichigo suddenly hated more? Red.

* * *

They began to run as soon as they were sure those eyes weren't following them, Those eyes that were paired with that hideous hair! Such a colour was an abomination.

They had to leave, leave now before he realised, before he acted, before he could notice. They reached into their pockets, gently running a hand over a sharp edge with one hand, gloved in thin, red material. It was comforting and they felt their face split in two as they grinned, larger than should have been possible.

Even the teeth were red, coated in blood that came from the torn, shredded lips.

It wasn't dark yet, but the time had come. The time was now.

They rounded the hard corner, looking down at the person sat there, legs crossed and tear tracks staining cheeks. They smiled again, less extremely, placing a hand gently on the shoulder of said person. The weeping person looked up, big eyes blinking, suddenly taken off of the crimson of the wound on their elbow.

The _child_ tried for a smile as that of the figure draped only in red widened. Hers shrunk, she curled in on herself and she opened her mouth as though about to scream.

Too late.

There was the ornate hilt of blade jutting out of her sternum and blood bubbling up over her lips, staining hem and her chin, the front of the party dress she had been so happy to buy on the shopping expedition with her mother the day before.

She made a noise, it was meant to be a string of intelligible words that communicated something but it was nothing more than a pained gurgle as, though the look of panic stayed, the light in her pale eyes dimmed and her body went slack.

Somehow, the smile widened as the pool of scarlet spread beneath their feet.

How perfect that she had been there, already partially stained. They didn't care who they killed, just as long as, in time, everything could become red. How very convenient!

Not to mention the the overhang of the buildings that caused the small alleyway to be there. It was perfect, there was a stack of sticks that had remained perfectly dry even with the downpour. They could use that, they had to be a bit more careful now, people were beginning to care more - they had to disguise their crime. But first…

They left the alleyway, their symbol carved into the girl's torso, her pretty new dress ripped. It was incredible, a lovely dusty red shade, but it wasn't enough. The alleyway behind them ablaze, burning from the sides by the building.

Their feet scurried away, suddenly carrying them away into a state of disappearance. Then there was a scream, a cry of a name - perhaps the girl and her mother had been using the alley as a rendezvous point and the girl had been injured on her way there?

They laughed the second they were far enough away to have faith in how inconspicuous they were. The heat would play with the rigor mortis and they had been sure not to be seen - the police would now about the rigor mortis, they would struggle a bit more; they liked to challenge people, it was no fun without a bit of manipulation.

* * *

Ichigo picked up another newspaper the next day, he could have sworn he smelt burning and, further damaging to Iggy's ability to perceive the world, police sirens began blaring not long after they had cleared the commercial area of the city, he wanted to know what was happening. He wanted to check something else, too - that they hadn't ended up in the publication.

That would be unfortunate but it could have happened, it hadn't been the best of days.

They had been walking down a street, into the car park of a supermarket. It was closed and they appreciated that at the time, or, at least, Fang did. He was finally forcing Ichigo to finish their conversation about his and Max's misadventures during their time at Ella's. Or at least he had been planning to.

Ichigo was struggling to think of a way he could possibly say much more than what he had - there really wasn't much more to say, at least nothing of significance.

In the end, he didn't have to. Or, to be more precise, he couldn't.

A van pulled into a parking space, the vehicle moving quickly and drawing all members of the flock away from their conversation and over to it as it sped into the parking spot. They were instantly suspicious and unsettled, jumping to their feet instead of sitting on the damp floor as they had be before.

Imminently, it would become obvious that they had made the correct decision in doing so.

The group that unloaded from the vehicle were not human, merely humanoid.

The flock recognised them immediately. Of course they did, how could they not?

Ichigo, from the beginning, had always related hem to the ridiculous tale of werewolves. It had almost made him laugh at first but that visage had soon melded into something much more sinister.

The Erasers were there!

The hybrids who had little hope of disguising themselves as normal humans as the flock managed to do wasted no time in their advancement. But it would be asinine to call a single one of the Bird-Kids weak. They were all perfectly capable of defending themselves, one-on-one.

But they were outnumbered.

Max had three on her but she was holding her own, flying above their heads and using that as a great advantage, making the wise decision to attack with her feet. She drove her heel sharply into one's temple and the snarling beast who had been swiping at her with sharp claws and strong limbs crumpled to the ground. His companions didn't care but it was evident to Ichigo Max was okay without help - it didn't appear as though any of the Erasers were in possession of arms.

Angel and Gazzy, both being rather small due to their age (not that they were actually aware of how old they were, exactly) had teamed up against another three. They hadn't dealt much damage yet but they weren't sustaining any themselves either. Besides, they were managing to guard Iggy as he fiddled with various _things,_ no doubt forming some type of weapon.

Nudge was okay against two, receiving a scratch or two that the appearance-conscious girl did not appear to appreciate very much. However, the erasers appeared to be in much worse condition - Max wasn't the only one using the power of flight.

Fang was being bombarded by four, unresponsive to their attacks as he threw periodic punches as well as unapologetic kicks that missed their exact mark a few times but always landed on the Erasers. He was clearly winning.

But Ichigo knew he was superior here

He supposed his best bet would be to help the kids who looked to be growing a bit more tired as time went on.

Five Erasers advanced upon him in a line that was beginning to fan out as they neared. Their fangs were bared and their clawed appendages held out before them menacingly. They cocked their heads like the dogs they were when he snorted humorously.

His response was his attack.

He launched a harsh, flying kick at the front 'man'. It was the type that had often sent his Dad sailing from the window when he tried to wake him up with violence. He supposed, for once, he was glad about the claimed polishing of his reflexes.

He went sailing back and, like a row of dominoes, the first sending the next flying and the pattern continuing in the same way until the very end, each one crashing into the building and leaving an unfortunate, oddly-shaped dent in the steel-grey walls of the supermarket.

He landed and looked over.

Compared to everything he had faced as a shinigami and other related thing, they were _pathetic._

He rushed over and quickly hit away the Eraser that was intently attacking Angel, ripping and clawing at her arm, beginning to draw blood from the wound and tears from her eyes. Gazzy couldn't help her, he was being attacked too - one Eraser had been knocked out and, suddenly the other two had been fueled on. Revenge, perhaps?

It didn't matter anymore - the collection of deep dents in the wall was growing and Ichigo felt little proud of it.

Angel smiled at ichigo and, for the first time in a while, she did not see him as that bleached figure for a single second - he was just _Ichigo._

"I made the right choice," She giggled girlishly "Trusting you."

Max smiled too, hearing the comment as she left her third and final attacker in an unconscious heap along with his comrades. At the same time, Iggy threw the explosive he finally completed at Fang's attackers. It exploded upon impact, sending the Erasers flying into the wall, adding his own dents to ichigo's little collections.

Ichigo laughed a little as he picked up the exhausted Gazzy and Angel and slung them over his back.

"Thanks." Gazzy said sleepily. Angel seemed to have already fallen into the realm of Morpheus.

Max smiled again and, for once, Fang's hatred dropped below murderous. Nudge, as always, was the same old Nudge.

It would appear, thankfully but somewhat oddly, that there were no CCTV cameras in the carpark. Whatever the reason, Ichigo was glad.

If not he was sure they would have ended up in the newspaper.

Still, he hadn't been expecting more news of the serial killer that he couldn't seem to escape. Especially not in a small, local newspaper.

Perhaps the burning he had smelt had been the result of that monster.

Unlike most people, Ichigo had seen the gates of hell open up and swallow people's spirits. He was actually rather hopeful he'd get to see it again - he had the strange urge to personally send that monster to his dwellings among the others. He wouldn't often say this when referring to a human, but he hoped that time came soon.

Something was wrong - something much more than the obvious wrongness that met the eye.


	10. Chapter 10

The air that went up past Ichigo's wings was cold and damp, the sun that shone brightly to his left not making a difference to the temperature.

Far down below, he could see the big, dark shape of a lake in a sudden clearing within the trees. Max had assured them the day before they were getting closer, slowly but steadily. He couldn't hear anything, though he could see the vague shapes of children splashing about and playing, but the wind as he flew far above them at a high speed. He watched as the head of a little blonde child tilted upwards, followed by a pale hand. They were surely going to tell their parent(s) about the bird people flying above them but they would be gone by then. Well, it was better, Ichigo supposed, than telling your peers as a young child that the boundary between the dead and the living blurred when it came to you.

Sure enough, down below, a suspicious figure grinned to himself as he heard the young girl rave to her mother as the woman combed the hair of the girl's younger brother through with her fingers. Bird people; it would seem they were on the right track.

They looked down at their fingers as they rubbed their hands together in a sort of sick glee. With conflicting emotions, they noticed their fingertips were sticky with the browning red of drying blood. In an ideal world, they would never have to rid themselves of the colour but, as it was now, especially among children, such a thing would be suspicious.

Still, in such close proximity to the perfectly clear waters of the little secluded lake, it was a shame not to dye the water.

Max landed, soon followed by the rest of her flock. They were in the forest beside another park. This one, though, was filled with people, bustling with life. Children of all ages ran around with smiles on their faces and laughter pushing past their lips.

Ichigo looked around, pausing for a second when he saw a couple of young girls who reminded him of his own sisters due to their startling semblance. As he stood there, staring absently with something much more subtle than his usual scowl on his face, he saw something else that surprised him. He started as he began to walk forwards.

"Geta Boushi." he mumble as he took a step forwards. Max stopped him, clasping his arm.

"Where are you going?" She didn't sound very happy.

"An old friend of mine is here."

"What, from japan? Why?"

"Who knows why that man does anything?" he sighed "But, still, if he's here it's probably for a reason." She loosened her grip and stared after him in exasperation as he sped up into a slight jog and made his way across the park.

"Kurosaki!" the man exclaimed with an unnerving smile, face shadowed as ever beneath the cover of his hat. He was attracting odd looks from passersby.

"Why are you here?" he asked, happy to finally be able to revert back to his first language after so long.

"You're in trouble."

"When am I not?" Ichigo shrugged but he knew he should stay on his toes.

"Listen." Uruhara told him, fumbling a crumpled piece of paper between the fingers of his right hand "don't open this," the paper was, in fact, an envelope "until there is nothing else you can do." he warned in a hushed voice "they might be here."

"They?"

"You know," Uruhara insisted "You know exactly who they are. They aren't what you think." his voice had dropped in volume again and he had crouched slightly, knees braced.

Abruptly, he straightened and his face was overtaken by a wide smile, very much contrasting the expression he had worn a moment ago. "Goodbye Kurosaki!" he waved, fan in hand, as he turned on his heel. Ichigo waved back unsurely, watching the man until he passed behind a car, suddenly disappearing.

Nudge watched as Ichigo came wandering back to the group, unsure as to whether he was dazed or just as curious as she. She could feel her heart beating within her rib cage, every other pounding accompanied by a question. He was facing the floor, lips moving as he seemed to speak for himself. She didn't get a word of it - she supposed he was speaking to himself in his language rather than hers.

She didn't get the chance to ask him. He passed right by her, still mouthing words silently not responding to her first question - a simple "You okay?" went unanswered. Somehow, she didn't think she was being ignored; he hadn't heard.

Max's eyes trailed him as he continued to walk past them, still deep in thought. As he began to walk out of her view, her feet began to follow. With a wave of her hand and a mumbled "Fang, you're in charge for a minute." she followed him through into the forest.

She saw him wander, walking straight into the thorny branches that covered the path he walked, each one lashing at his arms, legs and clothes. She was a bit more careful, guiding each one away to clear her path as she passed.

He sat when he came upon the trunk of a fallen tree. He put his head in his hand as he continued to murmur to the floor. Somewhat hesitantly, she sat beside him. He didn't seem to notice.

"You okay?" she ventured, knowing Nudge's earlier attempt at the exact same thing had been futile.

"Does something feel wrong to you?" he said quietly after a moment, straightening his posture.

"With what?"

"Kille Inconnu."

"The murderer?"

"No," He said, stretching out the word "the florist."

"Alright, no need to be sarcastic."

"I'm stressed," he told her in an attempt to excuse himself.

"What feels wrong to you, though? There's nothing right with a serial killer, is there?"

"But this feels too wrong..."

"How so?"

"I feel like this is familiar-" he was cut off.

"You better not be trying to tell me you know something about this!" She warned.

"Nothing of the sort."

"But why are you so affected now if you aren't trying to distract me while you wait for him?"

"Because Uruhara just told me something was more wrong than I thought it was." he withheld the information about the flimsy, creased envelope he ran his fingers over as it sat in his jacket pocket.

"Uruhara? Is that your friend?" he nodded "He was here to warn you?"

"Yeah." he swung his leg, hitting the log with his heel.

"But why does he know?"

"He knows because he is Uruhara."

"That doesn't make sense." she complained, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Neither does being raised in a cage and getting wings due to the small percentage of avian DNA you posses." He stood "Yet that still happened and, I'm sure, is continuing to happen."

"Not for much longer!" she smiled, determined, springing to her feet.

He nodded his approval as they walked back to the flock.

"Say," Ichigo asked as they sat there on the dewy grass of the park as a group some time later, "Would anyone happen to have any change?" He hadn't any left "We can get a newspaper - we won't be in the US for much longer so we won't get many more opportunities to catch up if we can't read the language. I feel like something has happened."

"Kille Inconnu?" Max asked, almost certain of the answer, as she passed over for quarters "You've made me a bit more wary of them..." She felt a chill run down her spine as, momentarily, her vision was stained with red.

Sure enough, Ichigo had been right. He didn't even need to flip open the paper to see that. There, on the front page of the paper the young Hijabi woman had presented him with a smile, was an image of a lake so familiar it was unsettling...

That river was surrounded by police tape, the waters murky and clouded, as the article informed, with blood.

Ichigo sat back down before he began to read and, from over his shoulder, max too took in the piece of journalism. As they sat there, even on the constantly warming day, both of their blood ran cold. Gazzy took the newspaper from Ichigo with nimble fingers.

"Them again?!" he exclaimed loudly, drawing the confused gazes of a few people to him as he stood there with a newspaper in his hands.

"Who?" Nudge asked him.

"That stupid killer," he told her, a bit more quiet after his little sister shushed him "Kille inconnu!"

"They've killed someone else?" Iggy asked.

Gazzy prepared himself to answer but never got the chance. Ichigo spoke up first, still staring straight forwards and looking disturbed "No." Iggy made a confused noise as Ichigo took a moment to pause "they have killed another ten people," he wasn't done, continuing again after another pause "at the lake we flew over yesterday."

Max was suddenly struck with the realisation that the monstrous human being (an identity she was beginning to doubt since hearing Ichigo spread some type of cryptic light upon the topic) seemed to be wherever they were.

"They're close." She mumbled as the realisation dawned on her "Surely they aren't after us?" She didn't really want to hear the answer.

Ichigo rolled the already misshapen envelope between his fingers again. He sighed. "I doubt it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But we can't let him distract us."

Max agreed "We need to save those kids."

There was a sense of victory, they thought, that came with instilling fear on people like that. It made them jumpy and left them vulnerable; when they were as scared as that they were easily distracted which left the real attacker with a wide open opportunity.

But that didn't feel right here. That boy with those immense secrets not even his comrades knew, the one with the unmissable, easily recognisable appearance they could not forget - how hideous that colour was! - was too used to being a target he had learned to turn the tables. They realised, as they traced a pattern on the cool metal with scarlet they were no longer aware of the origin of, it was only a matter of time.

They supposed it wouldn't be too much of a hindrance. They liked a challenge and deadlines were great motivation. With a wide smile that scared the young Hijabi woman who had been watching them through narrowed eyes enough to avert said eyes, they realised the end should be drawing near. It was coming, the time was coming to drown everything in red.

They supposed she would be a good place to start.

The park had emptied of all but that strange, nondescript figure crouching by the swing-set, running a finger over the side of the pole she could not see. She had forgotten about the job she had been doing, about the stack of newspapers tucked beneath her arm and the change jingling in her coin-purse. She was completely entranced.

Then the figure had turned and she had been urged to do the same, suddenly petrified. That smile was inhuman, the teeth too sharp and stained, not yellow or brown, but with faded pink, sitting in the jaw in jagged rows like tombstones. There seemed to be an excess of them.

She inhaled deeply, squeezed her eyes shut and balled her fists as she turned back.

That terrifying visage was right there!

They smelled like blood and, all of a sudden, she was aware that the figure she was seeing was the same present in the publication she was selling.

When the police arrived at the scene there was no one there but a woman who had already been completely taken by rigor mortis. Her lips were already blue. The weapon was at the scene as it always was, no fingerprints.

The poor woman was taken away after the scene had been photographed and her corpse outlined, her face the true image of terror.

It always seemed to be a teenager who found Kille inconnu's victims. The poor girl who was sat there, sobbing as one of the officials draped a blanket around her shoulders, cradled her in a motherly hug and tried to convince her to calm down.

How could she? She had, after being concerned about her insufficient presence at home, gone looking for her sister beginning and ending at the park she had said she spent the day at, only to find the poor college aged girl laying there in a pool of her own blood.

The investigator wandered the scene, wincing every now and then, soon requesting for the poor sister to be escorted home. She noticed the newspapers on the floor, sitting beside them a dropped coin purse, just as bloodstained as everything around them. The newspapers were everywhere and it was incredibly likely some had been blown away.

It was intriguing. Upon checking, she had discovered the coin purse to contain a total of twenty-five dollars and, just like the weapon, no fingerprints besides those of the victim. What, if not money, could be the killer's motivation? How sick did one have to be, even if it was right there, not to have even been tempted to take money when it was right there?

Suddenly, everything she knew about criminals was being tested. There was normally some type of motive or just a reactionary action when the chance was presented. There was usually some type of insanity or trauma in the making of a serial killer. Somehow, she didn't think that was the case here. It was common for criminals to slip up, but this one had taunted the police force all over the country for so long, not once making a mistake even though their mark and weapon was left at the scene of every crime. They weren't careful yet they were and it was terrifying. They were no closer than they had been when the threat had first emerged.

The blood soaked newspaper, she realised, hosted a front page article about the same killer as they were investigating. They had been printed in monochrome and the article had a picture of the lake where the last crime, only the day before, had been committed. She was aware that it was now pretty accurately coloured.

Ichigo went back to the park that night. They had been sleeping in trees again and he had left in shinigami form, desperately hoping his body would not fall during his adventures.

There was a hollow at the park, terrorising the spirit of a woman in the midst of a crime scene. Painfully, he had seen both the woman to whom the spirit had belonged and the scene before.

She was crying and screaming as she ran, clutching her arms over her head as she was driven into a dead end, crouching with her eyes shut, bracing herself.

As the hollow bore down on her, he ran at the beast. He drove his zanpakuto into the beast's flank, eliciting a piercing roar and drawing its attention. The woman's spirit could not move, frozen with fear and staring at him, his sword and the monster he was battling with a look of terror in her eyes. She had clutched her hands over her chest, over her chain.

The beast recoiled and Ichigo sprung forwards, extending his blade and driving it in a harsh arc down through the head of the monster. Its mask broke as a familiar, unpleasant sight appeared.

But, as seemed to be the case with everything recently, something was so very wrong. The gates appeared in the sky above him, but they were different.

They were open.

At either side of them were creepy, inhuman hands clawing at them. The sinner whom he had just brought to their end was sucked into the gates that finally slammed shut after his entry, hitting the clawing hands and causing them to retreat. He watched on, confused and worried.

Then he turned to the spirit of the woman. She was staring up at him with wide, coco-coloured eyes.

"I've seen you before." She squeaked, still clearly in a state of complete and utter terror "What are you?"

"I'm a shinigami," He told her, not beating around the bush. He wasn't good at this "Do you know what has happened to you?"

"I'm," She sounded resigned "dead." he was thankful she was aware, too many people were not "Kill Inconnu killed me - my body is over there."

"You know a lot." he crouched next to her, hilt of his sword resting on the ground beside him "most people don't."

"What was that thing?"

"Hmm? Oh! That was a hollow. They are corrupted souls for lack of a better term. You see that chain in your chest?" her eyes had not left his blade but she nodded nevertheless "Souls become hollows when their chains go or when another hollow turns them, unless they were evil in life. Just like that hollow - those gates are where evil people go."

"And what about me?"

"That's where I come in. It is a Shinigami's job to send plus souls like yourself on to the afterlife."

"So that's a real thing, then?" She asked, clutching at her hijab, suddenly smiling a little bit.

"It is." he raised his sword and her eyes shifted again.

"How do you do that?"

"With this." he held out the gargantuan blade before him.

"How?" She barely choked out the words.

"Like this." He flipped the blade and pressed the end of the hilt to her forehead.

"Thank you," She said as her spirit began to fade "Shinigami."

When Ichigo returned to the tree and his body he could not sleep. It wasn't the discomfort that was stopping him from sleeping, he was mentally exhausted, it was the oddity nagging at his mind. For the first time in a while, it wasn't Kille Inconnu.

Why were the gates open?


	11. Chapter 11

Ichigo had woken up, feeling like he was falling.

Then he hit the ground and realised that was what had happened.

"Gazzy," he groaned from the dampness of the morning grass. The young, blonde boy had been sharing his tree and had, in his sleep, kicked out, knocking Ichigo to the floor where he lay then. The boy did not wake.

It was barely morning and Ichigo had spent the night fighting a hollow and sending another girl on, unable to sleep until his eyes literally would not stay open and his mind physically refused to run coherently for any longer. It had been a stressful night and, the minute he was fully awake and the subtle aching pain in his back had subsided, the thoughts of the gates refilled his mind.

He stared blankly up at the watercolour sky; it looked odd, the reds streaking it less like the subtle faded hues he was used to and more like the blood laid thickly over the floor of the crime scene he had had to visit the night before. A shiver ran down his spine, something more than a drop of dew from the grass rolling down his back.

As ever, Iggy was the first to wake, gliding down from his tree to the ground below. He went to take another step but found his foot suspended and unable to move in any direction.

"What?" he asked as he shook his head and tried a bit harder to withdraw his foot from its clamp.

"Sorry," a familiar voice replied, followed by some shuffling as he felt the pressure on his foot lessen "I didn't want you to step on my face."

Making sure he didn't by feeling hesitantly with the tips of his fingers in the unfamiliar environment, Iggy lowered himself to ground, crossing his gangly legs beneath him. "Why are you on the floor in the first place?" He laughed.

Not that Iggy could see it, Ichigo flushed red for a second even though he still continued to scowl "Gazzy." He sounded bitter. Iggy giggled again. Ichigo just shoved his arm "Shut up."

Iggy just sorted. "For God's sake!"

"You want breakfast?" Iggy managed disjointedly between bouts of laughter.

Ichigo sighed as he pushed himself up onto his knees before his feet, making to set a fire as Max woke up, ever following the typical order they seemed to have subconsciously established.

They walked for a couple of hours that day, through towns and forests before coming up to a rather small city that ended where the sea began. Max looked around, fair hair moving with her, before stopping at the highest point of the cliff they had approached, looking down into the murky seawater below then moving to face the flock, standing proudly with hands placed confidently on her hips.

"We're here!" She declared as the motor of a small personal boat began running with a roar that took a moment to settle. "There'll be a ship here at noon," there was a clock tower in the city that declared it to be 11:30 at the time she was speaking "We should be able to stow away on that, if no one does anything to give us away."

Gazzy began to whistle, feigning innocence and pretending not to know to whom max was referring, as he threaded his fingers together behind his back and took a couple of steps back, walking directly into Iggy and sending them both stumbling.

"It'll be faster than flying," max continued as the hum of that motor began to fade into nothing more than the noise of a bumblebee, rapidly replaced with the crashing of the murky waves upon the shore of pebbles "Because we won't have to keep taking rest stops - we might not even be able to take rest stops due to the nature of the journey - If we think we are about to get caught," Gazzy began to whistle again "We can take flight until we think it's safe again - if we get up high enough we will be no more suspicious than a few seabirds."

Ichigo snorted "Those are some pretty big birds." Max clicked her tongue as she swatted his arm.

As a group, they all turned to face the caliginous swell of the large waves passing over the water and shore, watching the horizon where the sun burned bright, bright enough to make them all squint as they tried to see past it, in search of that ship, straining their ears for the distinctive bellow of its horn. They didn't see anything for a while, they just stood there in silence, trying not to blink, making it something of a game amongst themselves to try to spot it first.

Thinking back on it, Ichigo was sure they looked very odd to any passers-by - he was aware there had been a few, accompanied by the tell-tale patter of footsteps on uneven ground or the rumble of engine trying to power wheels over roads of the same nature. The thought was almost amusing to him, even then as he stared over the uneven line of the sea, just spotting the shape of the hull of a ship emerging from beyond his vision before being forcefully wrenched from his quiet inner amusement by Gazzy triumphantly yelling at having spotted the dull, grey shape, hardly indistinguishable from the sea it glided over.

Then there was the horn, the horn that Iggy heard louder than anyone else yet still hardly heard at all because of the distance between him and its source.

"How long's that ship gonna take to get here?" he asked as he sat on the ground.

Ichigo looked around and glanced back at the boat that didn't seem to be growing any closer. He blinked couple of times before sitting down beside Iggy "A while." he deadpanned.

The rest of the flock followed, their group of kids and teenagers staring oddly at the distance between them and the edge of their vision turning into a more casual image of the same kids and teenagers captured into conversation, even if in an odd place.

Ichigo picked at the mud caking his boots - not just the soles but the entirety of the sides and both the front and heels. He could feel the corner of the envelop sitting in his pocket digging into his leg ever so slightly, not enough to be uncomfortable, but definitely enough to let him know that it was there.

It was a shame, he had been almost relaxed, almost feeling like he was living the semi-normal life he had realised a while ago didn't suit him as much as he wished it did. But then there was a shiver running up his spine and his mind was clouded with nothing but red, so much, in fact, that it seeped into the real world like a filter, tinting everything the crimson he had, since meeting Max and the flock, grown to hate.

The horn blared again, less distant but still not where they needed it to be. They sat there for a few minutes more, though this time in silence, before Max sighed and hauled herself up to her feet. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face where the wind had moved it, noticing with a bit of a displeased face it was in desperate need of a wash. She took a few steps, to where the cliff they were on cut into something more of a steep though walkable slope.

The slope was lined with metal railing, cold to the touch and dirtied with rust, sand that had stuck to damp spots on it, and the dried excrement of a few birds. They all decided, even Iggy who couldn't see it, to ignore its presence. Max didn't mind as a pale hand found its way onto her shoulder, the back of it dotted with a pattern of freckles that greatly contrasted it.

Fang ended up leading the group, Max and Iggy taking up the rear, grumbling as he saw the bright orange, almost right besides him but not quite, in the periphery. That definitely wasn't a part of the dry, de-saturated landscape that almost appeared to have been placed underneath a sepia filter.

There was no sand on the beach, only a plethora of pebbles and rock, each a different shade of grey or brown. The air that surrounded them smelled damp and the sky above was growing grey, the thick, dark clouds coming in, in wisps from the edges that amalgamated in the centre to create a dark, threatening veil. There was a definite promise of rain in those clouds.

The ship was clearly in view now, approaching the harbour not to far away from where they stood, on the small stretch of beach. Max began to move quickly along the beach, making herself look as inconspicuous as she could while still ensuring all of them would make it in time. Once again, the flock followed, trying to mimic her movements in as casual and effective of a way as they could.

The ship pulled in with a final blare of the horn. They were there waiting to the side, hopefully out of sight and, if not, not too suspicious looking. A series of people unloaded from the ship, unloading a series of crates and boxes, filled with miscellaneous cargo, labelled on the box in a series of languages, each unfamiliar to each of them.

When the last worker, a skinny man who was too young to have been greatly experienced, ran back up over the slippery, slimy, damp wood of the harbour and back onto the ship on long legs - he looked a bit like a mixture of Iggy and fang, actually - they glanced around for a minute before, after deeming it as safe as possible, dashing forwards, sticking low and trying to make themselves appear small. As they ran, they found comfort in reminding themselves they were children and had an excuse to fall back on. They could always say, if worse came to worse, that they were playing a game and had not been intending to do anything. If they were caught on the ship they could say that Iggy, being certifiably blind, had accidentally made his way onto the boat and they had merely been trying to retrieve him.

The only issue was, aside from Iggy's understandable apprehension, that their options would be exhausted, at least temporarily and the had nowhere to go until new opportunities came about, and the matter at hand was pressing, it would be exponentially damaging to the lives of more innocent children the longer their action was prolonged.

Nudge could feel her feet slipping over the slimy wood underneath them with every step she took. She was trying hard not to slip as she made equal efforts to keep up with Max (and, thus, Iggy who had been trailing her due to the unfamiliar surroundings), Fang, and Ichigo who seemed entirely unperturbed by the less than ideal conditions. Her heart was hammering too, but, suddenly, they were in the ship.

They were sitting in a cold room, huddled behind various cargo stacks that were to be taken away from the destination they were currently at and on to the next, hiding behind them and holding their breath as they waited for the opening through which they had passed to close.

It did without a hitch, plunging them into darkness. It was comforting, context accounted for, to be taken into a state where they were less likely to be caught, even if the scent of the air was musty and rather disgusting, and the 'ground' beneath their feet was rocking incessantly, beginning to move.

Gazzy, true to form, yawned as he fell back, head of messy blonde hair landing on his sister's lap who, too, seemed ready to make Morpheus' acquaintance. Her head lolled to the side a few minutes later, as the rest of them sat there in a silence that seemed to be visibly paining Nudge, landing on Ichigo's shoulder. In the darkness where it couldn't be seen, Fang's face shifted to a dark scowl as Max's was graced by a slight smile as she stared at the faintly golden outline of Angel's head where it lay on the shoulder of the boy of whom they had all doubted the trustworthiness.

They discovered, a while later, that the horn was much louder within the ship and that, in the chasm-like space in which they resided, it echoed, bouncing off of everything and reverberating everywhere, seeming not to want to fade into the oblivion into which it was destined to disappear.

Understandably, Angel was pulled abruptly from her slumber and everyone else from the light dozes they didn't remember falling into, when the noise sounded with no consideration for their presence - it would have been much worse, however, if there had been any consideration for them, they were not meant to be there, and, if someone knew they were, there would be trouble. Incredibly, Gazzy continued to sleep, snoring gently, not loud enough to alert any attention, especially over the noise of the waves and the ship itself, drooling slightly onto the leg of his younger sister's jeans.

Of course, it would happen while they were in a confined space from which they physically could not escape, that a stench would begin to permeate the air. It was so putrid, so vile, that, even very much conscious of the secrecy it was imperative to maintain, not one of them failed to withhold their protests and/or complaints.

"Gazzy!"

"Ugh!"

"Dear god!"

Still, Gazzy did not budge, even as Angel made a face and shifted his head to rest on the floor.

They all fell asleep again later, sprawled out across the cluttered floor as much as space would allow. They ended up as a series of tangled limbs and bodies that had not been that way when they had actually fallen asleep.

Fang was comedically displeased when he woke up to find himself pinned down by a very muddy combat boot rested on his chest. His arms, too, had been pinned down by two blonde heads and his legs by the combined weight of both Iggy's torso and Nudge's. He was quite literally trapped in a tangled mess of limbs that did not want to move. So he just laid there, most displeased and staring up at the high ceiling he could hardly see. On the one day he broke the order, he would be trapped until it settled back how it should have.

Thankfully, Ichigo woke up about ten minutes later, shifting his muddy boot from Fang's chest and leaving a very obvious trace of its presence.

"You okay there?" Ichigo asked a seething Fang, voice tinted with mocking amusement that only seemed to displeased the still trapped boy further. Ichigo made no move to help the other boy who had not once hesitated, in however long they had known each other, to make his dislike a known fact amongst the group. Instead, he dug through the backpack they filled with food they could keep for a while. He grabbed a ziplock bag of nuts, or what was left of it, and began to eat them laboriously, mock-pondering over nothing s he chewed each individually.

He swallowed just as slowly as he turned his head to face Fang with a face entirely empty of his usual scowl, replaced by nothing but feigned confusion and amusement "What?"

Fang grit his teeth, running his tongue over them and looking everywhere but Ichigo's stupid face as he readied himself to ask the impossible.

"Help." he finally managed, tasting something dour in his mouth that wasn't there, feeling his face burn red, and clenching the fists he could no longer feel and was only half convinced were still there.

Ichigo looked to be pondering again, blinking in rapid succession as though taken aback at the same time, hand balled beneath his chin as he made Fang wait, before he pushed himself up from his low squat and up to standing. He took a couple of loose, wandering steps towards Fang, stopping only momentarily by his head to say "No thanks." before continuing on to the other side of the room, the rest of his breakfast in hand, where he sat atop one of the crates, watching Fang, struggling and exasperated beneath his restraints.

It wasn't until Max woke up and Fang could feel nothing but the uncomfortable tingling numbness of his unmoving limbs, that he was actually free. As Max had been gently shifting her flock members, careful not to wake them, she had managed something halfway between a tut and a giggle directed at a scowling yet still bemusedly smug-looking Ichigo who had not moved from his perch on the crate on the other side of the room.

"I'm going to kill you," Fang hissed lowly the second he was free and he began to be able to feel the tips of his toes and fingers again.

Ichigo, knowing much more of the limits of his own strength (he really didn't know all that much about his own limits, actually, and was not very willing to explore them), snorted "Good luck." he hopped down from the top of the stack of crates Fang had seen him hop up onto despite them clearing his head by as much as they did. He was showing evidence of his habit of jumping down from high places without a second thought once again.

Angel, it turned out, was awake at the time. She looked over at Ichigo as Fang began to approach him, moving unnecessarily as he tried to regain the entirety of his sense of feeling and Max tried to stop him. She stared at the amber eyes that had easily caught her blue ones, even past Fang. And then she saw something.

A sea of red drowned her vision, replaced by an image of black and orange, blurred as though in low resolution and moving too quickly for whatever had been capturing the scene to do so effectively. It approached the large, white blob that, in turn, approached it, slashing a giant arc of silver down through it with ease as it dropped down to the red of the floor below, assuming a familiar position as it landed easily and safely. Then it leaped again, flying at the next couple with ease, passing through with no hesitation as it flipped around in ways she couldn't imagine any solid form bending.

She felt her eyes grow wider as she realised. She didn't know what she had realised, just that she had realised something. And Ichigo had something to do with it. "You couldn't," She said sharply. Fang stopped and turned back, looking slightly pissed at the interruption.

"What?"

"He's right. You couldn't hurt him."


	12. Chapter 12

The second they heard voices, all of them rushed to the stack of crates in the corner that seemed to be by far the oldest.

The first voice was old and dry, somewhere between a whisper and a rasp.

"We'd all be dead," he finished as his voice came into the space within which they could hear it.

"Please," This voice was feminine and much younger, though lingering on the deeper side "He's not as dangerous as you say - he can't be; you're so paranoid."

Ichigo pushed himself up to the crate and braved to peek over the top of the worn wood. He watched as the old man raised a bushy grey eyebrow, a boat over a sea of wrinkled skin, brandishing a newspaper as though it were a weapon to fend off assailants or a vital piece of evidence, imperative in solving the case and saving his client on death row.

"Really? He has stuck again, you know?" he hesitated, frail old arm slowly withdrawing to rest closer to him.

"They say he's only taunting the police," Ichigo knew the topic of discussion at hand, and tried to pretend it hadn't felt as though there was a cool breath on the back of his neck, accompanied by a pair of eyes and a sudden dizzying quality to the air - a heavy sort of hazy thickness.

"But that doesn't mean we are in danger specifically," The woman defended.

The man only scoffed.

"Don't be a fool," he said sternly, opening a panel on the wall and flicking a few switches Ichigo couldn't see "Everyone is in danger!"

She started as he stared at her with his pale eyes wide and glassy.

"We're not, we're not, we're not," She repeated shakily, trying to convince herself rather than him as her eyes disobediently landed on the paper in the man's hand.

"Fool," he said again, waving a dismissive hand that suggested there was nothing else he could do if she refused to believe him even then.

Behind Ichigo, Gazzy took slight shuffling step backwards, making them all freeze, holding their breath, as the crate balancing atop the one he had collided with swayed precariously. It didn't fall.

But the woman looked over, her dark eyes slightly confused, clearly somewhat out of it. They scanned the area for moment and she approached. She stopped just before the crates and looked over them.

"Huh," she breathed "That's odd..." her eyes flitted over to the industrial door that led to the stairwell from which she had descended "He'd be none too pleased if _this_ was what was lost-" She scurried back to the door herself as the loud horn sounded from somewhere above.

Max looked over them all as soon as she began breathing again.

"That was close," Fang commented drily, trying to flick a remaining fleck of mud from the centre of his chest.

Gazzy let a quivering breath pass through the narrow space he had allowed to form between his lips: a sign of his agreement.

But Nudge was focused on something else.

" _This_?" She said in that usual voice of hers that hated not knowing everything; Ichigo had originally thought it annoying but maybe, just maybe, it was more useful than given credit for "What's _this_? She was clearly talking about these and not the rest of the cargo, right?" She shook her head, her curly hair bouncing across her shoulders "Who is he?"

"Who is he?" Ichigo repeated beneath his breath "I doubt it's the old guy, but then who?"

"Who were they talking about anyway?" that one of Nudge's questions was actually clearly directed at him, rather than some omnipotent entity.

He shivered again and he and Max replied in unison without a glance nor moment spared.

"Kille Inconnu."

A tension so thick it was palpable settled over them in the darkness, the way the light that had breached the entry way thankfully had not.

But Gazzy soon broke it "That guy again?" His voice was perhaps a little too loud for their current situation "He following us or something?"

This time, Ichigo and Max did look at each other very purposefully, their eyes alone communicating an entire conversation they did not wish to have aloud.

But Angel knew of the conversation, half of it anyway. To her, Max's mind was as open as she wanted it to be, the only problem was her own discreteness.

 _Is he following us?_

Then she had tensed.

 _But why?_

Neither the stiffness of her shoulders or muddle of her mind lessened at all.

 _Who is he?_

 _What is he doing any of this for?_

Even if only one half of the conversation was open to her, Angel was fairly confident in her ability to grasp the message passed.

And she was so sure she had gotten away with it: max hadn't said a thing, hadn't looked at her with accusing eyes. No, she had just moved away with a sigh, pressing her back against a crate where she sat to Fang's side.

But Ichigo looked at her the second they had dispersed somewhat.

"Stop it," he told her simply, perhaps he had felt the tugs at him mind, observed her at the time of each, or, perhaps, he had seen her demeanour change slightly even if she tried to disguise it.

"Stop what?" She feigned innocence even if she was almost certain he would not believe it.

"That," he waved a hand to accompany his vague answer, but she felt her stomach drop a few inches.

She gulped as he continued.

"You know how easy it is to tell you're there? Why do you think I fed you that thing before?" her mind flashed back to the blur she had been allowed to see not long before. Her stomach dropped a little more: did that mean he was aware of the things keeping her out?

"What else have you seen?" His eyes were stern and his scowl deeper than ever.

She shook her head slightly as her stomach was lifted back to place by the upwards movement of the butterflies filling it.

"Nothing,"

"What?" Ichigo knew she sounded earnest, that she most likely was not lying unless her untruthful words were pathological. He had encountered a fair few liars and hated to think of the consequences when he misinterpreted their words as truth.

"I've not seen a thing."

"How?"

"I," She began to stutter, either a hard part of the truth to tell or a hole in her carefully woven lie where she had no prepared words to insert, he could not yet tell "I keep getting pushed out." She was aware it was a rather large understatement.

"Pushed out?" he pressed "By what?"

"A face," She began and he suddenly began to believe her a little more "Like alabaster, no colour at all," a little more "Except for the eyes," She shivered "they're gold," A lot more "And he looks like you, Ichigo, but he never seems to stop smiling, he... he mentioned a king."

"I believe you," he relented "Was it always that face?"

"No, here was red too, just red, nothing else." She shook her head again, more violent this time around "What is that face? Do you know?"

He sighed "Don't turn into Nudge." he told her as he rolled a white feather between his fingers. He had found it on the floor and wasn't sure whether it had come from his wings or hers "It's a long story."

She gestured to the space around them, cluttered with crates but seeming somewhat cavernous in that moment "We're on a boat we aren't meant to be on, sailing over the waves for however long - I've got time."

"It's a difficult story," He tried again.

"Then you'll just have to explain it well." She had settled in front of him, bright blue eyes expectant and gaze fixed, her legs were crossed beneath her.

He began to wish he had Rukia there right then, perhaps the actual Uruhara rather than the envelope sitting in his pocket. He felt as though he very much needed one of their Shingami gadgets, to get rid of any of Angel's suspicion, to hoist him from the hole - no, crater - he had dug himself into.

But he didn't.

"You wouldn't happen to know about Shinigami?" He began but, before she could answer, a young girl emerged from behind a stack of crates.

She had dark hair that fell in matted tangles, a face that was more dull, round eyes than anything else, and a chain jutting from her chest. There was barely a link left.

"Help me," She was so soft spoken her words were hardly to be heard over the hum of the boat's engine.

"Help me," she repeated, thin arms, almost as white as the feather in Ichigo's hand, outstretched.

"What?" Angel asked suddenly "I... I hear a voice. Where's it coming from?"

"I suppose now's as good a time as any,"

Angel was suddenly drawn from her confusion by a muffled bang. To her side, there lay a body, Ichigo's body.

"What?" She gasped, looking up to her left to see a blur, but a familiar one.

"What?" She repeated.

The blur, very gradually increasing in clarity made movement, a gesture directed at her. Her overworking brain interpreted it as wait. The great shape slung across what she assumed was the figures back was lifted and moved before it.

A sword, she realised. She heard a girlish whimper and watched, unable to move, as the blade was flipped and the hilt directed at something she couldn't see. There was a girlish sort of crying, but it went after a moment, after Angel watched a shape, glowing ethereally, appear in the air.

The figure disappeared then, Ichigo reanimating.

"What?" She asked again, shaking slightly and feeling rather akin to a parrot.

"You wouldn't happen to know about Shinigami?" he asked her again, knowing the answer preemptively, yet deciding it would be a good place to start.

"Not a word."

"I'd guessed." He said wryly before sighing yet again, feeling as though more sighs than words had passed his lips in his lifetime "I suppose this'll be a bit hard to believe..." he trailed off and twisted his hands into one another, completely going against Angel's perceptions of him up until that moment.

She was sure hours had passed, every other flock member was soundly asleep, but, at the end of the story, she flt numb, like she couldn't blink nor breathe nor move, like if she even tried to shift she would be pulled right out of the dream she was in, as that was surely what it was. Nothing more than a dream; a dream where Quincies, Hollows, and Shinigami all existed and the being she looked at was a mixture of all three and a bit human.

There was a tingle passing through her fingers, to her hands before pacing up and down her arms. She would not move them. There was a prickled piercing through the inside of her skin on her feet and lower legs. She would not move. There was a sting in her dry eyes, a tear slowly running down her cheek, a remnant of her eyes attempts to moisturise themselves. She would not move. There was a pain at the back of her throat, a burning pain she knew she could easily wash away. She would not move.

But Ichigo then did, looking over her uneasily but seeming beyond genuine.

She swallowed, forcing down the lump that had formed around her larynx.

"Pinch me," she breathed. He snorted his response.

"Why did you not tell us?" She asked him later, when the initial shock value had faded in some modicum.

"Would you have believed me if you hadn't already seen something?"

"No." her hands found a little knot in her hair that they worked to untie "Will the rest of the flock know?"

The glance he sent over to them, sprawled across the floor in sleep, directed at some more so than others, made her almost sure of his answer.

"That's a no, then?" She yawned.

He pondered for a minute more, as she yawned again and he did the same trough the empathy of yawning "For now." he conceded.

"Why?"

"Fang doesn't trust me yet, they won't trust me after I tell them, not Max and Fang, they won't trust me if they know I'd been keeping such a major secret. Max might forgive me a bit later, but Fang wouldn't, not if he didn't trust me entirely even before. I'm sure they'll know eventually, I can't keep out of trouble. Everyone finds out eventually."

She stared up at him "But you've been good for us - you helped max in Arizona, you helped us with those erasers."

"I took away Fang's chances to help," he corrected "He hates me, so he hates everything I do."

"Well, you don't really do very much to make him like you." She reasoned.

"Look at him," Ichigo gestured to him, where he slept, curled up in a corner as though he was scared of getting trapped by his restlessly sleeping companions again "And honestly tell me you can blame me,"

She swatted his arm with a giggle "Shut up."

"Fine, but you need to get to sleep," She was yawning again and tried to stop herself midway to protest that she was not tired.

They talked again in the morning.

"That ghost," Angel said, feeling rather strange to b talking about such matters in such a factual conversation "What was she saying?"

"She kept saying 'help me' over and over again." he popped cashew into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

"Why?"

"She didn't know she was dead, I don't think - it's a common side effect to dying. She wanted us to save her."

"From what?" Angel's blood ran cold, passing through her veins almost painfully, as though it were truly full of shards of ice.

"From them, I think. I don't know for sure - she didn't say anything else."

"Them? Like the ship's crew?" That ice turned to glass so quickly she genuinely felt a painful stab in her chest.

He held his hand before him, tilting it this way and that "Somewhat,"

She tilted her head and waited for him to continue.

"I don't think it's all of them."

"Who, then?"

"Whoever knows what ' _this_ ' is," she knew what 'this' he was referring to, even if she didn't know what it actually was. Her eyes passed uneasily over the crates across the room, the ones she had not hesitated to push herself flush against the day before but that were making her stomach churn and her heart drum against her rib-cage rapidly.

Max had heard the word ' _this_ ' from a distance and seen the air quotes Ichigo put up around it.

"You think you know what _this_ is?" She sounded excited, optimistic, though a little distrusting that he hadn't gone to her the second he believed he had figured it out.

"Not quite," he told her, looking at her dead on "But I'd bet my life it's some sort of illegal cargo a few of them have sneaked onto the ship, with or without the permission of their boss, but definitely without the knowledge of all of the employees.

"We could check," She told him.

"You could, but what if they noticed the crate holding their precious merchandise had been opened? That just screams 'stowaways'."

"But we could report it to the police-" She trailed off, realising the fault in those words as soon as she said it "No," She rectified "we couldn't - we wouldn't be able to explain it without giving ourselves up as stowaways. Not to mention the fact we don't really want these wings in the eyes of the law and public just yet."

"No." Ichigo agreed.

Just then, the boat rocked violently to the side, surely passing over the gargantuan swell of a wave in a storm. The empty sound of the waves crashing against their vehicle had been much louder that morning, now it made sense.

Unprepared, they all went flying sideways, sliding across the floor, a jumbled mess of limbs that took not a moment to extend to include the rest of the flock as well, as the cargo crates, tied tightly and nicely into place, stayed out as though nothing had happened.

But there were a few crates without that support. The old, wooden containers came flying along just as they had, effectively rapping them in the corner they had been sent to as it would be impossible to move them without a fair deal of effort and enough noise to ensue their presence was known.

So they sat there, backs against the old metal wall, staring at the aged wood grain of the crates tat had them blocked in, tracing patterns with their eyes as they had nothing else to do for entertainment. If the man and woman were to return then and move away the falling crates, they would surely be discovered.

But, as that was not the case, they just sat there for about a minute.

Until Iggy started to gag and hold his fingers to his nose, soon followed by everyone else.

"Gazzy!" They all complained, but Gazzy was just as bothered by the foul stench.

"It wasn't me, i swear." he appeared as though he would have flailed his arms in his protest had they not been preoccupied at that moment.

"It was!" Nudge protested before Ichigo stopped everyone from their petty argument.

"It wasn't Gazzy." he confirmed "It's coming from over there." He pointed to a crate, older than most but young amongst those that had trapped them.

Unsurely and somewhat unwillingly, Max sniffed the air "You're right," She agreed between coughs "But what is it?"

Fang, being the nearest, was assigned the job of opening the box, a task none of them wanted to do but all of them deemed necessary. He grumbled but worked to pry of the strongly fastened lid.

Then something fell limply from inside the box.

It was an arm, blue and very little more than bone.

They all backed away as quickly as they could and as much as space allowed.

Then the rest of the body followed, just as limp, as blue, as bony. The clothing it wore was tattered and ripped.

Tears welled in a few eyes.

Then nudge spoke, voice rawer than it had ever been "Why didn't we notice sooner?"

"Smelling salts," Ichigo's voice piped up out of the blue, over the gloom.

"What?" A tear dripped from the bottom of her chin.

He pointed over to the other side of the room. There, in a pile, lay little salts, somewhere between clear and purple. "Smelling salts," he repeated "There are a few in her hair too." he gestured down, o the face none of them really wanted to look at, with the hair that remained only in a few clumps of matted, bloody ebony, with the skin, sunken, stretched, beginning to break, with the round eyes, open still, but white.

"We can't..." Even max was taken aback, unsure and with her usual composure snatched away from her "We can't stay here." They all agreed wholeheartedly.

Ichigo felt a breath on his ear, followed by a shaky whisper.

"Is it...?" Angel needed to say no more for him to know precisely what she was saying.

"It's her."


	13. Chapter 13

The stench was dizzying, permeating the room and hovering like smog.

Not one of them was okay with it, and, it would seem, the rest of the ship's crew was not too much so themselves. It wasn't as bad as it had potential to be, as they rocked over another wave their prison fell apart and slid back across the space, when the stench reached the upper section of the ship.

They had all, mouths and noses covered by the lifted necklines of shirts, eyes focused anywhere but on the horror they wished they had never seen, scuttled across the area, as far from the corpse as they could possibly get. It was luck they had been allowed to do so when, accompanied by words and scoffs and gags of complaint and disgust, the sound of heavy footsteps - at least three pairs - began to hammer on the stairs that led down to where they we hiding.

Ichigo sat with Angel pressed into his side, her breath creating a spot of warmth about level with his lowest rib, trying not to breathe any more than he had to though the filter of black fabric sitting across his lower face. She did not want to watch, she had seen enough, but Ichigo made himself stare with hawk eyes as the door creaked open with a high, shrill protest of its hinges.

Through the door, as it continued to move outwards, passed the first pair of feet; small but heavy, covered with familiar, worn, doodled-upon boots.

The figure that followed was one of a woman, one with dark eyes and dark hair but skin without much colour. It was just as familiar as the boots, seemingly regulation should the similar attire of the woman's companions be an indication, though somehow very distinctive, with both the odd little scribbles and the odd scuff pattern that, while it covered the usual toe, extending across the top of the boot as though something had been repeatedly scraped across it. Ichigo cocked an eyebrow as he observed.

She was trailed by a man, one they had not yet seen, with a short stature, wide eyes, a twitching nose, and mousey hair - an adjective that was perfectly applicable to the rest of his appearance as well.

In turn, he was soon followed by a man whose strict posture, as much a contrast as the rest of them, made him look to be at least twice as tall, the broadness of his confidently held shoulders looking three times as wide. His eyes were dark and narrow, his lips set in a firm line, hands tucked behind his back as though he were standing in a military-approved stane.

The third man observed the room with furrowed eyebrows, not moving room his spot as he struggled to see the cause of the disturbance beyond the tumbled crates - he could have sworn he had heard something aside from the somewhat disconcerting rumble of falling, moving crates.

But the woman's reacting was much different, her dark eyes flashing in the dim lighting as the opened, catching the traces of white, barely there but she was hyper aware of what she was looking for, that decorated the floor. SHe breathed in deeply, pupils dilating drastically as her vision flitted from one side to the other, at the two men that stood to either side of her. Her tattooed hands twisted together.

But then the large man saw something much, much worse.

There was a limp limb, blue and purple and all other shades of unhealthy, that slipped into view from behind an intact stack of crates as the ship moved over a smaller wave.

Angel breathed in deeply, not meaning to, but allowing a few tears to drop onto Ichigo's shirt. He touched her back as he continued to watch, half of him fascinated, the other half wanting to turn away, not wanting to watch what was so obviously a crime scene for any longer than he had to, should he become a valued witness.

"Mike," the large man's voice broke from his throat in a hoarse croak "Sara," he trailed off as his companions turned, intrigued to see what had affected their stoic friend to such a degree.

Mike, saw it first. His pale face flushed green as his eyes decisively closed and he turned away, unwilling to look anymore as the ship rocked again, his sea legs ruined. He went tumbling into crate, nose twitching again, catching the scent of death and gagging and choking on it as it was made so much worse.

Then Sara saw it and her heart dropped and stopped before sending itself straight into overdrive, hammering on her insides to the point at which she could feel the unsteady beats reverberating through the body. Her breath hitched and her body was overcome with an overwhelming sense of cold She tried to blink the image away, unsure of what to focus one, for she was aware of both the evils in this room that she could see.

She also knew of many, many more.

Max watched in horror, moving as quietly as she could to the front of their barrier to grasp a better view. She leaned on her hand as she pushed herself forwards and upwards. But she paused, low on her knees rather than where she had wished to be positioned.

There was something on the floor there, something rather unpleasant to the touch, as damp as everything else in the space.

She looked at her palm, covered in the flecks of white she could suddenly see everywhere, in small groupings that she didn't understand how she hadn't noticed up until then.

Looking around cautiously, eyes checking many more times than was strictly necessary before daring to make a movement that extended anywhere beyond two inches, Max brought herself up to Ichigo's level, trying to wipe her hand discreetly on the crate in front of her because she'd hate to have that stuff stuck to her jeans. She crinkled her nose and shuffled slightly, suddenly aware of the fact that there were most likely traces all over her, she had been sleeping on this floor and was kneeling on it at that very moment.

"We've been caught up," She whispered to him as Fang's eagle eyes scanned over their heads, alike to Ichigo in the way that neither seemed to have retained their ability to look away "In some sort of drug network."

"I'd expected as much," he hissed back, still not looking away as she strained her ears to hear his words, watching the movement of his lips closely, through the dark fabric over them, to give her some extension on her vague clues.

"And you didn't say anything?" Max felt the gentle prickling of numbness begin from her fingers and toes, pins and needles setting in from where she had been sitting oddly for as long as she had, unable to adjust her position.

"I wasn't sure and, honestly, I never suspected this" he gestured around the space, looking less than happy with himself as he continued in nothing more than a hushed murmur "I should have seen past the obvious." But Max didn't hear.

"We need to get out."

From behind her, Fang made a contribution, eyes as fixed as ever "How?" He paused and scanned intently as the two men continued to look shaken and the woman just looked scared, not of the body, but of the men "What's to say we won't end up like her?" he gestured to the lifeless body of the young girl.

Ichigo grit his teeth as he felt Angel quiver at the abrasive words "We won't," He breathed deeply "It's not safe, not at all, but we can get out; we all know how to fight well enough to avoid two men this shaken and a sickly-looking woman."

"And the rest of the crew?"

"They won't be much of an issue," Max didn't miss how confident he seemed, how assured he was in the truth of his own bold words "We can't beat around the bush anymore - this isn't just we're a bit suspicious. I'm anything but convinced we are not in incalculable amounts of danger."

Max sighed wryly "When are we not." her hands fumbled the hem of her t-shirt as her eyes searched the space thoroughly, as though she was trying to acquaint herself with it. She looked over at her flock, at the people she was sure she could trust, at Ichigo who was beginning to melt into that category, slowly. While she was unsure of what to do, she knew what she needed the outcome to be: she needed her family safe.

"Do you have a plan?" She said as her hand found its way from her shirt to Angel's hair, the usually silky, golden ringlets matted, frizzy, stained a dull shade of murky brown by the lighting and moisture.

"A bad one," Ichigo conceded

"That being?"

"We wait a little longer, see if we can find anything else out. We jump as they leave - there definitely isn't enough time to get over this before they go. But we don't know nearly enough yet."

"Why did this have to go wrong?" Max asked, tugging at strands of hair, desperate to keep her hands moving, as she watched Mike sway on unsteady feet which he had only recently reclaimed the use of.

Fang spoke up again "Blame Murphy," he sighed, wondering how long ago the hisses and whispers would have got them caught it if hadn't have been for the dead child. However, he soon dropped that train of thought, deciding it was probably better not to consider things menially when he was meant to be listening.

"Wasn't she," The voice of the large man, understandably much more timid than it had been previously, managed to pass between his lips, now parted rather than pressed together so tightly they appeared to be sealed "Wasn't she a stowaway from a while ago? A couple of years, right?" He continued to sway.

"Theo," Mike began, clearly addressing the other man "You are. It was - it was," He paused and his buggish eyes, cloudy and clearly distressed, narrowed and looked at the noun he spoke of next. His speech was slower "Sara's job to get her to the police…"

She looked around, clearly terrified, sweating rivulets that felt like trails of fire passing across her skin.

Then, with no other options, she made to run.

She didn't get far.

Max never saw him move, but Ichigo was at the door before Sara was. Mike and Theo, startled and still out of it, didn't even make the slightest recoil at his sudden appearance.

He clasped her arm with a vice-like grip, feeling her squirm as his blunt nails dug into her skin. She struggled and struggled, but, eve with one hand, he was much stronger than her.

She didn't understand it, he was a skinny stowaway kid but his eyes were on fire, just like her arms and the drops of perspiration that rolled over her, and he was entirely unfazed, too strong to be believable as h didn't even struggle to keep her trapped.

"Murderer," he hissed at her as his eyes met hers and she felt her brain burn and mind melt to mush.

How badly she wanted to deny it, reject the label with all belief, confidently and correctly placed, put into the wrongness of the statement. How much she wished to have retained the ability to distance herself from the world, to remove the word from her vocabulary entirely.

It burned, like the tears stinging in the corners of her eyes that she tried not to let fall. It stung, stabbed at her insides and tore her apart.

"Murderer," the strange boy repeated in his accented voice. It was like a twist of the knife already embedded deep in her stomach. But then the knife was removed, and her blood came pouring out, weakening her. Her knees buckled beneath he as the flood gates opened. Tears ran down her cheeks as, allowed by the loosened grip of the boy, she fell to her knees.

She was dead, but there was no blood, only deep-seated emptiness, guilt and regret. She hadn't felt that before, not even when she had done it. But that disgusting word cut deep.

But he was not willing to let up on her, and she was entirely sure his actions, the coarse words he let fall from loose lips as though they were completely unfiltered, were justified.

"Who is _he_? Will _he_ be most displeased that we know, that they know? Or will you just kill us like you did her? Why is this," he gestured an angry hand around at the crates of hers that had fallen all about the room, composure dropped in a way Max had never seen of him "Alright because of him? Murderer." the last word, the very same that made her want to cry more and more at every repetition, was spoken like a curse. She supposed it was.

"It's…" She breathed, struggling to gasp air into her pained lungs "it's not," But she wished she had seen it sooner, before he ruined her life, before she ended that poor girl's, before she began to bow at _his_ feet.

"Then why did you do it? Who the hell is _he?"_

She felt shivers race up and down her spine, dancing along like fingers, lightly traced.

"The man-" She felt her throat begin to close as the ai forced its way through along with words that were barely such. Her entire field of vision was hazy and she wished she was already sitting, stewing in the prison she was doomed to serve at for the rest of her life; no kids, no husband, no family who would be willing to associate with her after they heard. What had she done?

"No shit," his face was contorted with anger she was sure even that girl had not seen in her last waking moments. Both the gaze and thoughts that ran around her head like a broken record, stuck on repeat, were dizzying and she felt herself shrinking further and further in on herself "never would have guessed _he_ was a man, no idea at all!"

"The man," She tried again, forcing down both the rising bile and doubt, screwing up her face and concentrating on forcing the last few words to spill from her mouth "The man in red."

And then she watched as he froze and is hands clenched into tight fists she could tell were just aching to hit something.

Bang!

There was a new dent in the wall, a new bruise on one of his hands and a wrinkled, tattered envelope in the other.

He looked down at the flimsy paper ruefully.

"I wonder when I'll get to the point at which I decide this is my only option?" he mused as he turned his attention back on her.

"The man in red," She stuttered in a hurry as the form of a little girl - she couldn't bare to look at little girl for a second more even if the similarities between this one and the one she had killed were scarce - appeared from behind some crates "Has been around longer than anyone knows - he emerged just recently,"

"Kille Inconnu." The boy confirmed as the girl stood to his side, followed by a group of other teenagers and children.

"You know of him?" For some reason her clouded brain could have no hope of understanding, he was filled with the sudden overwhelming urge to laugh.

"Too well."

"Then you know how he feels about orange?"

"I know he likes red."

"Orange is the worst, he tells me. He says that it's too close to red yet too far off - just this far from correct. It drives him crazy."

"He is crazy!" he was yelling now, and everyone would come rushing down in a minute and see her for what she was, a murderer whose remorse was beginning to fade "You're crazy! You, him, anyone else you associate yourself with: you're all bat shit insane!"

And then the laughter bubbled up over bright red lips, stained with blood rather than makeup, as eyes, dark and growing darker, scanned the room like they knew exactly where they were looking.

"You know she's not alone?"

"And neither will you be," he assured her, eye flashing a piercing gold that halted her laughter and caged the air back into her lungs. She was choking on nothing but words again.

"When you join everyone else in Hell!"

It was at that moment when footstep after footstep could be heard on the stairs, like a herd of elephants barrelling around in disarray.

"Mike, Theo, Sara?" the first voice called in question, that of the old man who had been with Sara when they first saw her "What's going on? Did you find out what that smell was?"

Theo nodded, jaw set an eyes heavy.

"We did," he sounded morose and abruptly, in the doorway, everyone paused as they barely registered the scene. There must have been thirty of them, first seeing the stowaways, then Sara, then the purple hand that they all refused to look at long enough to confirm the realness of.

"Just smell Sara's hands! You'll smell it - the blood, the death, all of it."

Collective breaths hitched as, with shaking hands, mobile phone after mobile phone was fished from pocket after pocket, an emergency number pressed with fingers that did not seem to obey the commands of these people's brains.

They had all been moved from the storage room, up to the main part of the ship. It was a rare instance to be thanking strangers as they were, but the boy had stopped a murderer who had never even attempted to plead in defence of her case, had merely fallen victim to quick retreating guilt that left behind no humanity when it was swept away.

She was still down there, sitting amongst her sins, tied up tightly by the hands of the only one who had been either willing or able to approach the mad woman.

That was when the police boat came along, burly men with handcuffs at their hips unloading, some disappearing below to retrieve their criminal, others approaching the flock, Ichigo, Theo, and Mark to ask of them what they could.

But Ichigo withheld a little something: he was in much more danger than anyone else, but they were not to know that, not when there was so much on the line.

A while later, a cuffed Sara was brought up roughly from the depths of the ships, malicious grin not shifting, eyes still sparkling with ill intent. She had not mellowed even if she had been returned.

She was thrown roughly onto the boat by the two officers who had remained unknown. But she would not leave without a final parting word.

Her eyes met Ichigo's again as she was jostled and bustled about.

In a voice as clear as day, she was sure to inform him of the nagging corners of her mind.

"What you said before - we're all going to Hell,"

Ichigo watched her disappear over the waves through somewhat vacant eyes, thinking of only those dark eyes that had been plunged right into black.

He knew she wasn't right in her statement, but the bite of her words was much pleasant and the conviction in her face would not leave him, just that was enough to make him shiver, unaware of the way Angel hovered beside him, worried but silent.


	14. Chapter 14

The storage space below decks had officially been cordoned off, now off limits to the crew and their stowaways.

So the two groups of people were left to stay together until the ship could dock, unable to continue as it should have done due to obvious circumstances. It was understandably awkward, though, luckily, the ship's crew did not make any reports about the kids and did not seem to hate them even if they had broken the law. They, silently though unanimously, put it down to Ichigo's efforts that had successfully saved all of them from their murderous ex-coworker.

The first conversation between the group was held a few hours after the police had left with Sara in tow, after she had spoken those words that had made even Ichigo who had numerous experiences with death and the people that brought it about freeze up.

No one had really spoken since, aside from hushed whispers amongst themselves that barely passed lips in anything aside from an incoherent or disjointed manner. But, at the time for dinner, prepared by the shaky hands of the cook who had brought out the food with him as he sat down at whatever space he could find on the already overcrowded table.

The cook found himself sitting right across from a pair of disconcerting eyes that stared at him intently from a scowling face.

Soon after he found himself wishing he had found space absolutely anywhere else.

But it seemed as though the entirety of the table had purposely shied from that spot, leaving it the only one available to him.

It may have taken a while, but conversation eventually surfaced, beginning in the form of a string of unconfident thanks to the scowling teen who did not seem sure as to how to receive them.

His shoulders moved upwards, his deep-set scowl lessening before completely fading to be replaced with a funny sort of expression that was more than a little bit uncomfortable.

"Umm…" he ran a hand through the already messy orange hair that sat on his head, spiked up and pointing his way and that "It's alright, I guess."

"Alright?" Theo laughed almost incredulously "Alright? You saved all of us!"

"I guess," Ichigo responded.

"Just accept our thanks!" Mike told him, flinging out his arms, hands still shaking slightly.

"But are the conditions behind the thanks a little bit… off?"

"You saved our lives. I'd call it more of a stroke of luck than anything."

Ichigo sighed.

"That's why," Theo spoke loudly, his booming voice filling the space "We've decided to help you." he addressed the group of uncomfortable kids and teenagers collectively.

"How?" Fang asked, eyes narrowed as he looked over the crew with a significant lack of trust; a rather funny thing considering he was one of the ones who had been hiding below decks without their knowledge for a while.

The man smiled widely, the kindly grin juxtaposing the rest of his appearance entirely "That's easy," he told their group, not at all deterred by Fang's less than friendly reception to the proposition of their gift, nor Max's untrusting eyes or Ichigo's ever present scowl "If you're stowing away on a ship, surely you have somewhere to go."

He smiled again, mouth closed this time around, as Angel looked up at him. The clear blue eyes were covered and uncovered in rapid succession as she blinked, long, black eyelashes fluttering.

"You're going to help us?" her voice was soft and gentle but the flock, sans Iggy, could see it in the focus on her face that was, to them, poorly concealed: she was digging through his mind, turning over corners and uncovering intentions. It seemed, when the tight line of her lips loosened marginally, that she had placed him in the clear.

With a glance over at Angel that lasted a little bit longer than Max could understand, Ichigo decided it would be in their best interests to listen, even if, as always, things should be taken with a grain of salt - just because this man was kind and convinced he and the rest of the crew were helping didn't mean it was a sentiment shared amongst all of them.

"That's why we've decided, when we dock, we'll all chip in a little to buy you plane tickets to wherever it is you're headed!"

The thought was much appreciated but Ichigo found a bit of a flaw in the whole thing. How were they meant to pass through the x-rays in airports with wings on their backs?

"Would you mind," he began, sincerely praying they would not "Exchanging those for tickets for a boat?"

Theo seemed confused but gave no signs of reluctance when he answered "I guess. By why would you not want to go by plane when it's so much faster?"

Ichigo hadn't prepared an answer so he looked to his left and began to adlib "Well, the thing is, Fang's scared of heights…" the boy in question sent him a glare, dark eyes burning, but did not voice his displeasure because he didn't want to compromise the situation.

"Fang?" the chef questioned "One of you kids is actually called Fang?"

Fang scowled again as Ichigo barely caught his snicker.

"I don't suppose you caught our names, did you?" Nudge said in the same rapid speed common in her speech, the words rolling off her tongue as though she were running out of time to say them. Her smile widened as she saw the series of nods and contemplative expressions that meant she had an excuse to continue speaking.

"I'm Nudge," She told them, pushing a bit of hair behind her ear. The crew made sure not to comment on what they were sure would be a series of rather odd names "this is Fang," the boy in question gazed at the dully through eyes as dark as the hair that, in places, was beginning to fall over them as it seemed terribly overgrown, as she further alerted them of a fact of which they were already aware "this is Max," The eldest girl waved, eliciting a comment from a middle-aged woman who had, until that point, remained nameless.

"That's an odd name for a girl,"

"Short for Maximum," max informed curtly.

Despite not being supplied much of an answer, the woman smiled and introduced herself politely as Anna as Nudge began again after having been cut off.

"Iggy," The blind boy did not look at the group, but his thin, pale face lit up with smile even if his milky eyes did remain entirely blank "Gazzy," the blonde boy, dreadfully young to be in the situation in which he had found himself, smiled at them, crooked teeth boldly put on display "His little sister Angel," the girl was angelic in appearance as her name would suggest, but she was younger still "and Ichigo." She finished, gesturing to the boy who had restrained Sara who stared at them impassively, not bothering to exchange his scowl for a polite smile, as he waved at them uncomfortably.

"Nice to meet you all." the chef said as the crew took their turn for introductions.

"We'll be docking in a couple of days," he told them later as he showed the around the ship, noticing how the group, sans the talkative girl, nudge, lagged behind a little, walking with shuffling footsteps that betrayed the intention behind the slow pace "Until then you'll need a place to sleep. We've got a couple of cabins spare but you'll have to share. Boys to one, girls to the other; does that sound okay?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Max dismissed with a shrug, designated to speak due to her role as head of the flock.

"Says you," Fang sounded bitter, speaking in hushed tones that conveyed much more in venom than they did in volume "you don't have to share a room with him." he jerked his head in a way that was not at all discreet.

"You're just paranoid, he's not as bad as you think."

"I don't trust him."

"Or like me," Ichigo cut in after he sneezed loudly enough to make the chef turn to observe the conversation "as you constantly make very apparent. If you don't want to stay with me, I'm sure the hallways is always free."

Fang scowled but remained silent, right up until he followed Ichigo into the room offered to them. The chef closed the door behind them as Ichigo flicked on the light. Gazzy looked around the room, at the one bed and the two chair sitting in the room, a chest of draws shoved into one corner, a few written notices on the wall that not one of them wished to occupy their time reading.

Without a word, Ichigo flung himself into one of the chairs. Fang, with another look of contempt, took to the other, leaving Gazzy and Iggy to share the bed.

When they woke up the following morning, Fang was on the floor, sleeping in a heap of black fabric, ebony hair, and pale skin that looked especially white in the brightness of the light streaming through the random gaps in the curtains covering the lone window.

Ichigo looked at Fang as he woke up, watching the slumped figure of the lone member of the flock who still held such a substantial amount of derision for him it bordered upon antipathy.

"Morning," Ichigo said as he pushed himself up onto his feet, walking towards the bed and waking Gazzy and Iggy as there was a loud knock on their door.

Ichigo looked over at the door before walking over to it, stepping over Fang who was still trying to work out how he had slipped from the chair in such a manner.

"Oh, you're up?" Mike asked from where he stood in their now open doorway.

Ichigo nodded mutely in response.

"Breakfast is in five," Ichigo nodded again as Mike moved away, watching the retreating, wiry frame of the man before leaving himself. Fang, fuming slightly, ran after him, pushing in front of Gazzy and Iggy who were already on their way out.

By pure coincidence, they met with Max, Nudge and Angel as they wandered the straight hallway it would be near impossible to get lost in.

"This has been much more interesting than I planned for it to be," max yawned as she rubbed the sleep from the corners of her eyes. While she received no verbal responses, not even from Nudge as the girl was walking along as though in a sleep-induced daze, she got nods and sighs that confirmed she was not alone in that opinion.

The next morning, they docked at that port, spent a few more hours with the crew on solid ground as the ship was instantly taken upon by authorities who had been waiting for it, waiting for their tickets as the crew attempted to orchestrate their own plans for the time being amongst themselves.

The situation was both very inconvenient and very unlucky, something each of the flock was perhaps a little too acquainted with, Ichigo especially. Tyche seemed to hate him even more than Fang did, and that was saying something.

After a few hours, they were back to sitting by the edge of the water, tickets in hand, alone after the crew's inevitable departure.

The water was just as murky as the last time, rising and falling, crashing upon the beach, made of sand that was almost brown and covered in seemingly rather sharp pebbles and stones, in foaming trails of off-white.

It was crepuscule by the time their scheduled ship arrived, the lilac sky stretching above them with the bright white silhouette of the moon barely visible within it. The water, in its own sort of distorted manner, was reflecting it below them too, though the appearance was much nicer to observe in the vast stretch above them.

It was cold and none of them had winter coats, only light jackets that would not weigh them down too much in their travels as they were typically done by air. The wind that blew around them as though it had a vendetta was damp, carrying with it salty moisture from the great water source that stretched on for many unseen miles before them.

"Well," Ichigo commented dryly "Doesn't seem we'll be breaking the law this time around."

"True," max agreed "But we might seem a bit odd without either an adult or luggage beyond whatever the hell is left in those packs of ours."

Fang, pulling the pack from his back, informed her "Not much."

* * *

Gritted teeth, coated with blood from bleeding gums and lips that had never been wiped away, the enamel even stained with an unsettling pinkish hue, was not what one would want to see before death ineluctantly took you. Those gritted teeth, tightly held against one another, easily visible through parted lips covered in a network of oozing cracks, may have been considered a smile had they been paired with eyes less bloodshot, eyes that did not bulge from the face as both they and it warped in the flames of all-consuming insanity, eyes that did not burn and glimmer with the light of a pleasure that was, in such circumstances, entirely inexcusable.

But it was what so many had seen.

Now she was just another one of them, one who had heard the news but distanced herself from it, taken no precaution. Though, she thought as she tried to think of anything but the sharpness of the pain in her side and how much more difficult breathing was becoming as her blood pooled around her like a sea of crimson, taking precautions against one as unpredictable as he was an impossible task. How could you protect against a killer with no MO, whose murders were only recognisable as his because of the way the weapon was left so intentionally, whatever it may have been, alongside a symbol that was enough to strike fear into the hearts of all who saw it, like taunting clues to the authorities he was mocking?

The man had no name, just a title given to him by the authorities who had realised their predicament soon and had decided it was imperative to find a term to address him. Why would the term devil not suffice? Nor monster?

Usually his victims died quickly, seeing those sharp teeth and those split lips, as they died before they could leave a message about their deaths.

She didn't know why, but she was different, dying in a swamp of pain so excruciating she could neither speak nor move in anything but a pathetically feeble manner. With a hand, shaky and heavy that felt much as though it belonged to someone else, she traced her message on the floor, realising how morbid it was that what was technically her last word would be written on the floor of som rarely travelled back alley in her own rapidly spilling blood.

She knew, as the breath from her lung finally stuttered as it did, as her eyes rolled back and became nothing but white, as she slumped back against the wall completely, that this was not how it was ever meant to be.

She was meant to graduate, make mistakes, get married eventually, have a family of her own. She was meant to live a full life, before she died, likely in hospital should her family history be any indicator, seeing her family's faces as her vision went, not the thing she had seen and written with her rapidly depleting energy:

 _Red._

 **A/N**

 **This is a little late and a little short but I couldn't add anything else without making it apparent I was just bulking it up for the sake of reaching a word count.**

 **How about I just talk to you for a bit? It'll bring the word count up a little.**

 **Is anyone familiar with Tokyo Ghoul? It's great but the manga is way easier to understand than the anime. Not that the first season of the anime isn't fantastic and Unravel ties with Again for the best OP ever.**

 **Also, if you are familiar, I'm sure you know about the knuckle cracking thing? I've seen a lot of people in fanfics considering that breaking the fingers? It isn't, trust me. I've done it for years because my hands are weird beyond just being strangely double-jointed in some places - I can't crack my fingers normally and have done that since before I knew Tokyo Ghoul existed. It does nothing aside from perhaps freak a couple of people out.**

 **Still gonna fall a little behind on the word count, but oh well.**

 **I'm just gonna throw in a(n) manga/anime recommendation then go. Trust me, Ajin is fantastic even if, I believe it's chapter 27 or 28 in particular, does need something of a trigger warning and the whole thing is full of pseudo suicides (Ajins can't die so it's not really death but it is, you get me? No? Me either…)**

 **Anyway…**

 **Thanks as always to anyone who supports this story in any way, I don't think I've addressed this yet but well done (from forever ago) to anyone who guessed the situation with Kille Inconnu before I sort of began to explicitly hint at it.**

 **All the best,**

 **We'reAllABitOdd**


	15. Chapter 15

When you spent as long as they had standing on ground that rocked beneath your feet, it was rather a shock to the system when you stood on solid, stable earth. But it was, in the end, a rather welcome shock, It was nice to regain both balance and familiarity in only a mere few steps.

"Well," Max said as she scanned their surroundings, shrugging the collar of her jacket upwards "I suppose we're in Germany at long last."  
Ichigo scoffed "But not without getting involved in a murder case."

She ignored him as she turned to Nudge, the most technologically adept amongst them, with a question in her eyes.

Nudge nodded quickly as she pulled a sheet of paper, a map she had printed a long time ago and nearly forgotten about, on which she had labelled all she deemed necessary for their trip. Or rescue mission, choose whichever term you find more appropriate.

"Well, if we find lodgings for the night," her dark eyes flickered momentarily to the sun that grew gradually lower in the ever darkening sky and the pale silhouette of the moon that was barely showing itself at that time "We can try to do this tomorrow. It'll be a morning recon."

"Do we have a plan beyond 'barge in there and hope for the best?'" Max was understandably sceptical of their chances as Nudge's vague plan was relayed to her.

"That wasn't my job." Nudge defended herself, throwing her hands up, map, the flimsy piece of paper it was, blustering in the wind along with any hair in the group that was long enough.

"That's a no then," Ichigo confirmed as he took his own turn to look things over "In fat, do we even have the money for lodgings or are we gonna have to sleep in more trees?"

"We do, actually." Max nodded, content "After all, we are poor orphaned children with no money and we need to survive and you saved a fair few people's lives."

Ichigo shook his head "You're a manipulative bastard, ain't you?"

Max smiled but her lips never parted, eyes glistening in the dimming light, mirth evident amongst a trace amount of madness.

They brought a room in a motel, a cheap but not particularly cheerful place, seemingly managed by a single man alone, devoid of any further life. The man in question was the one who greeted them behind the decrepit counter in his reception, face covered in scraggly facial hair, grey streaking the brown, his head completely bald. He was missing a few teeth, nothing to fill their place. Due to the expression he wore, seemingly in a state of rest, that was visible even before he began talking.

His accent was thick, almost to the point where it was hard to understand, but they got by.

Max slid their money across the desk that was covered with dust so think it gathered like a wedge at the edge of the stack of euros. The man accepted it without a word, carelessly throwing a single key over his shoulder and hoping one of them would catch it.

The room was no nicer than the lobby was.

The ceiling was covered in more mildew than it was the off white plaster that was steadily flaking away, landing on the disturbingly sticky carpet underfoot. The mattress, suspiciously stained and lying beneath thin sheets of the same description, looked to be about as thick as a sheet of cardboard. There was no window in the room, the only light the overly bright glow of the exposed light bulb that hang overhead, illuminating the entirety of the minuscule room, flickering on and off intermittently. The room smelled like the mildew that was overtaking it like a deadly disease, the air they breathed permeated by the stench of musty dampness and barely-there traces of cheap perfumes and aftershaves that mingled together to form a cloud of unpleasantness that was only bearable because they could remind themselves it was nothing compared to the rapidly decomposing corpse they had stumbled across in their last attempts at travel.

All in all, it was not the sort of place one wished to spend any time in at all. But, to them, it beat a fair few places they had spent time in by a longshot.

"So," Gazzy said "You reckon there's been a murder here yet?"

Ichigo flung himself onto the settee that let out a cloud of dust like a puff of smoke from the mouth of a smoker with a sigh "I neither know nor care." He stated as he flung his arm over his eyes, shielding them from the light directly overhead that none of them could find the switch for.

Despite what he said, Ichigo knew that was one of the room's only redeeming qualities: no one had died there, there was no corpse lying in the corners of the room, hidden from view and just waiting to be discovered.

It took a while, but they all fell asleep eventually, giving up on the light in the end as it seemed as though it were refusing to do anything but flicker to its own content, against their wishes.

Ichigo didn't move his arm, finding the pressure over his eyes somewhat comforting as it blocked the inconsistent light from flashing across the backs of his eyelids like flashes of lightning piercing the atmosphere.

Regardless, the colour painted on his closed eyelids, while fairly consistent, was not comforting in the slightest. He had a hard time falling asleep but exhaustion won out and he found himself encompassed by the arms of Morpheus, vision stained by crimson, fluid and moving, that made him think of one thing and one thing only.

 _God, he hated that colour._

* * *

The car park was as barren as the interior of the motel, or at least it had been before everything had gone more wrong than it already had.

It had begun when loud noise from above met the ears of the already-on-edge flock. As a unit, all of their head snapped upwards, watching as the creatures descended upon them.

They were no angels though, they were harbingers of doom that encircled them from above in numbers far exceeding their own, backed up by a fleet of helicopters not one of the unfortunate flock doubted were filled with weaponry intended to injure if not eliminate them.

Ichigo's hands balled into tight fists at his sides as he looked at the offending erasers with no absence of disdain. His eyes were dark and attentive, taking inventory of all the creatures who, at that point, were nothing more than objects to the school that had was suing them like tools, and the actual tools employed.

The fights he was used to were faster, more dangerous. The fights he was used to, he realised with a slight chuckle, happened predominantly amongst people who were already dead. He was at both an advantage and a disadvantage in the situation he found himself in once again; the enemy was less of a threat but his companions were more susceptible to severe injury than those he usually thought alongside.

Meanwhile, Max couldn't help but think it was nothing short of a miracle that the erasers had managed to find them again, there were no trackers in their clothing and no records of what they had planned left after Nudge's clever use of hacking.

There was a sort of pain in the back of her neck, some awful hybrid of a sting and a burn, deep seated within the flesh there. Her head span slightly as she clamped her hand over the offended area and hissed through grit teeth, trying not to let the nauseating pain distract her from the imminent danger that had just began their attack.

The first eraser swooped down, followed by a number of his peers, splitting into even groups and attacking the flock in their individual grouping.

Max no longer had any time to dwell on the bite at the nape of her neck if she wished to survive. She, along with everyone else, was severely outnumbered and, surely should the gargantuan size of her numerous attackers and the arsenal her side did not possess, at an even larger disadvantage.

She caught the first furry flying fist full of fury that went flying towards her, nothing being held back. The jolt she felt in her elbow and the complete knocking of her shoulder were nothing compared to the ever growing pain that burned in her neck, slowly darkening her vision from the edges inwards.

She felt dizzier and dizzier as she dodged and blocked blow after blow. She estimated she had knocked about half of her assailants out before the darkness sealed the final remaining speck of her vision and the spinning of her head made the blackened world around her rotate at a rapid rate.

She was numbed to all sensations by the time her head hit the floor with a dull thud that could not be heard over the raucous of the brawl occurring round her. The erasers did not waste a moment in swarming over her.

Ichigo looked to the side as he kicked away the last eraser and dodged another bullet. He barely registered the curses shouted at him from disabled erasers who could barely speak, distorted voices only further warped by the injuries to their faces, throats and chests.

Barely registering what he was doing, Ichigo ran to the side of his fallen companion and began to fight for her, shielding her as much as he was able from the oncoming attacks that did not let up until he forced them to. He was angry and confused and the erasers he refused to believe did not deserve the treatment they received fell victim to the brunt of his frustration.

He heard the _crunch_ as he let go of the final eraser, not dead but badly hurt, more bones than Ichigo could remember crushing severely broken. He didn't register breathing until then, when he let the air in his lungs be expelled from his mouth in a single action, replaced soon after with a deep inhalation.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he saw the surrounding erasers becoming fewer in numbers as the flock thought with all their energy, that supply depleting rapidly right in front of his eyes.

* * *

From the shadows a lone figure watched as, slowly but surely, the streaks of red were smeared across the surrounding surfaces. A smile spread across that face as things improved bit by bit from his twisted point of view.

 _Not yet, he couldn't interfere just yet._

 _These children had to prove themselves, he had to decide the best course of action._

The only one of them he was sure about was the orange, the one who had rushed in to protect a supposed friend (what a stupid idea friends were! How could one possibly ever wish to associate themselves with others when it would not directly benefit them?), that disgusting colour, so tauntingly close it appeared further from perfect than everything else, had to go.

Then orange turned faster than he had when dodging bullets, cold eyes cementing themselves upon the edge of the corner where the man of red took cover. Resentful but lacking any sort of alternative option, he tugged his hood lower, smiling in contentment as the aged, fraying red material rimmed his vision like a photo frame. Then, with a final glance back at that obnoxious orange, he ran as fast as he could, feet silent on the hard pavement they travelled over.

With a tut, he scanned the area for a victim, itching at the very deepest part of his core to see the world, even if only for a second, drowning in scarlet.

It was quick, it was easy, it was clean.

 _It was too easy._

For all intents and purposes, he did not exist. He was a dead man from another country who killed without an MO or a demographic.

For all intents and purposes, he did not exist.

No matter how easy it was, it was fine when the scene became doused in ruby, glistening under whatever light or lack thereof that filled the space.

No matter how easy it was, it was fun to toy with the police.

The police were the same wherever you went; megalomaniacs with god complexes who acted as though their knowledge was superior to the rest of the human scum who occupied the space that they believed should have been theirs, hypocrites who simply could not comprehend the value of human life beyond their ow despite criticising others for doing the same.

He killed slower this time, as he had before. It was fun when the victims felt as though they could change anything.

They should know, mere humans they were, that they could not win against him.

The message, much like the prolonged pacing and pained, choking, gurgling noises that bubbled from their throats like vomit, was exactly as it was before.

He liked this, he realised, he liked the messy word written on the cold floor in smudged lettering.

Well, of course, the language was not the same, but the message was.

 _Red._

 _Rot._

They were the same, just like all of these pitiful beings who thought they deserved to survive, who thought they were equal to him, who thought he was in the wrong.

He left the scene with a crazed bout of ugly laughter that bubbled up over his split lips like the blood from the mouth of the dead woman who laid limply on the alley floor.

* * *

The school institute in the area was a large, imposing building. The facility was industrial in appearance, like a disguise to convince passersby that it was only an innocent factory that produced something mundane such as food rather than inhumane, inexcusable experiments on children who were often handed from the hands of white coats to the skeletal grip of Thanatos who carried them away.

* * *

Fang hated to admit it, but he felt as though he were growing to trust Ichigo even if he didn't like the boy. It was hard to alienate him when he had, at the risk of his own safety, rushed in to help a still unconscious Max who was at risk of being either killed or taken by the erasers.

Max was sprawled out on the bed when the dreaded thought rose in fang's mind, her skin clammy and her 'rest' anything but peaceful.

She rolled and writhed, clawing at the back of her neck subconsciously, making the skin go red. But there was something else there, he noticed after a while, once he had suppressed the unwelcome revelation.

At the base of the nape of her neck, there was a bump in the pale skin, almost perfectly shaped. Tentatively Fang reached forwards and brushed a pale finger over the aforementioned bump, feeling past the loose strands of hair, damp with sweat and sticking to her skin, he could tell that lump was not something normal.

It was not meant to be there and he was willing to bet that was how they had been found.

He had to tell someone, he had to tell all of them. The only problem was not knowing what they would do either the information when it was given to them. How could they possibly react to situation as out of the blue and far out of the box as this? As much of their lives?

There was little in the world of the average human that could prepare one for something such as this.

He just had to hope they could figure out the best course of action to take.

 **A/N**

 **Hello, I'm back. I'm sorry - I've been busy and I'm going to the US in a couple of days for a couple of weeks so it only seemed fair to get this up now becuse I won't be able to for little while.**

 **Kestes, you review a lot and I'd like to thank you for it. I can't reply to you personally so I'll do it now.**

 **You mentioned being clueless? I'm assuming you meant about Tokyo Ghoul and Ajin because I was waffling in the last A/N? Honestly, I really would recommend them but only if you aren't bothered by gore and are ready to have your mind messed with. Tokyo Ghoul is a psychological and, while I don't think it technically is one, Ajin really should be in my opinion. I won't talk about them too much because I don't** _ **consume**_ **media, I** _ **dissect**_ **it and I reckon I could, between the two stories (drawing parallels and whatnot) write a 10k+ word essay talking about everything: Art style, characters, symbolism, plot, etc. Nobody wants that, trust me. It would be very boring and completely spoil both series for anyone who hasn't read/watched them.**

 **In short, because I'm waffling again, they are both fantastic and worth checking out if you think you might find them interesting.**

 **Also, I'd like to thank anyone who had responded in any way to this fic, it means a lot to me and is always welcome in whatever form you wish to give it.**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	16. Chapter 16

Max found herself fighting or a grasp on a slick strand of consciousness. Dizzily, she grasped at it and hang on as she was lifted upwards, out of the world of impenetrable darkness around her, only to slip and fall back to the bottom again.

Eventually, the darkness around her became something a little more distinct, a poorly painted image of moving colours that were there one moment and gone the next, submerged into the all-consuming blackness. Then it happened.

From the very centre of what she was barely willing to consider sight, like a gate opening, a crack of light, bright and white, _unarguably there,_ appeared. It widened gradually, the edges of bright to look directly at, the area where they had parted slowly gaining clarity but remaining ever blurry. It was a rather drab mix of varying shades of brown, grey, white and black that all mixed and melted together.

After a while she recognised the vague image she could see; their awful, cheap motel room.

As the realisation came to her, it was like that strand of consciousness she had been fleetingly grasping for had lengthened exponentially, wrapping around her and securing itself. It felt like she was being slowly hoisted upwards through a sea of molasses. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't move.

Then she was brought out in a swift movement, surfacing with a jerking move and gasping breath before she fell back into her pillow, feeling exhausted even though she had done nothing but lay there for however long.

The world around his still swayed a little bit, moving from side to side, to and fro, ever so gently, just enough to make her feel as though her head was swimming.

Then the swaying stopped and the darkness fleeted from the edge of her vision in a single moment as the spike of pain in her neck flared up once again before subsiding.

She gasped as the pain left, leaving her with her hair fanned about her, a tangled mess, on the thin, hard, unpleasant-smelling pillow. She wiggled her fingers and toes, moved her arms and legs and then waited. She waited a long moment and then a moment more, wanting to ensure the nauseating bite of pain that intermittently stabbed at the nape of her neck would not resurface anytime soon, would not bring her to her knees again as it took her senses like it were a thief.

With a sigh, she hoisted herself upright, onto shaking legs that trembled as determined arms tensed, holding her up more than aforementioned legs. She didn't look at her white knuckles, instead at the door right before her.

It was opening, slowly, laboriously, a centimeter a second or so it seemed.

The hinges squealed and the edge scratched roughly against the already worn flooring beneath it.

As strange as it may sound, she smelt them before she saw hem. Her friends, her flock, _her family,_ all had a sort of scent of their own, their combination making the equivalent of what she would consider a home, even if it didn't put a roof over her head. That combined smell was a mix of vanilla and cinnamon and allspice and the sort of cheap perfume that smelled nice but fled quickly. Their scent was a mixture of strong herbs and delicate roses, and fresh food - the family meal she had never had. Their scent was both everything and nothing to her at the same time. Sometimes, most times, she wished she wasn't so used to it so she could revel in it a little more. Always, never stopping, she wished it didn't get torn from her in part as it did.

She had smelt her flock before she saw them, but she had also smelt them before she smelt the thing that made her heart stop, her stomach drop and roll across the floor she suddenly found her struggle to stay standing on ending. She collapsed to the floor in a pile of shaky limbs.

It was a sort of irony smell, so strong she tried not to gag as it entered through her nose and closed a tight fist around her trachea.

She saw Fang first, leading the group with a limp. His hair had been misplaced on his head, strands falling in the wrong directions, he had scratched on his face, deep scratches and nothing worse than blunt nails could achieve, dotting pale skin. He seemed to be resisting the urge to reach up and tentatively touching his blackened eye. His face was as stoic as ever.

Ichio was next, a limp of his own and an injured Nudge hanging off of his torn up arm. Mx did all she could not to look away as she saw what the near shredded fabric of his shirtsleeve showed. Underneath lay what looked much more like raw mincemeat than an arm, oozing that same thick scarlet liquid they were doused in as though they had been bathing in it. His lip was split, surely only worsened by the ring he was chewing on that lay over it. Max was sure that must have brought some degree of irritation to his teeth but he seemed incapable of caring any less, as though that mild pain, that tang of the metal, was comforting to him.

Max hated to admit that she was relieved those two were the worst but she couldn't help it. She had never been able to feel in the same maternal manner as she did the others for Ichigo and Fang. Aside from the split knuckles that not one of them seemed to be without and the mild scratches, only Nudge seemed to be hurt at all. She looked like she was wincing with every step she took, trying desperately to keep herself walking with a regular gait despite the fact she was using Ichigo as a crutch.

Max's throat scratched but she had more important things to think about at that moment.

"What happened?" She called, worried, as she tied to pull herself back onto the bed. Fang helped he as Ichigo gently lowered Nudge into the only chair in the whole room.

Ichigo was likely the most worrying, not because him being hurt was affecting him, he seemed adamant that it would not through body language alone, but because he had always seemed so indestructible. Ichigo was, even if Fang wouldn't admit it under even the most dire of circumstances, the best fighter among them by a more than fair margin.

He was also, in that instance, the one to speak.

"Things didn't go to plan," he spat the words though a scowl deeper than usual, eyes sharp, eyebrows knitted, face held in a sort of icy expression that Max was almost convinced could cut her. "We stormed in without a plan, ran through the halls, looked everywhere-" His voice cracked and Max felt her heart do the same This wasn't him.

"The white coats couldn't lay a hand on us," Nudge picked up for him, her voice slow, a drastic change from her usual fast-paced chatter, a sort of wet rattle sounding in the back of it. Max didn't find it any less difficult to listen to than Ichigo's breaking notes.

"But," she continued, Max only half listening to the words, half of her devoted to only how much of a problem she considered that rattle. "We were lost - we didn't know where we were heading. We barged in through the first door that looked different from the ones before it There was a - I think it was a girl-" She paused and sniffed "Laying on the table. They had her-" She cut that sentence of there and did not continue it but Max could fill t in silently herself - _They had her cut open, like the science experiment she was to them._

"We stopped and the erasers came rushing in." She broke off in a fit of coughs and did not continue as she stared in horror at the splatter on her hand.

Ichigo picked up again, sending Nudge a look of worry that did not fade from his eyes even after he turned away, turned to max with those eyes that looked like a melting pot of honey and brown sugar at that second. Those weren't Ichigo's eyes.

"We stopped and the erasers didn't. They caught us right as she flatlined. We had nowhere to run - our only option was to prolong the time until they tore through us until Iggy and Gazzy made one of their bombs. We got the scratches and bruises from them. They blew up the wall without much warning, everyone stepped back but we kept fighting. The debris covered us and we ran the second we had ourselves freed."

"And Nudge?" Max pressed, no longer sure if she really wanted to know.

"She was there - right beneath a bit of the rubble. It fell on her chest." Fang didn't look at Max as he spoke to her. It was more like he was addressing the ground than her.

"We didn't get a single one of them out."

They had done their morning recon without her- or had tried. Now the whole plan was in jeopardy, their faces known by the white coats. They had to wonder just how much harder things would be.

But did she blame them?

No. She couldn't. They had tried, they would have tried with or without her, and they had failed, they would have failed with or without her.

"Right," Max clapped her hands "Then I guess we just need another plan, a better plan."

And, just like that, the atmosphere in the room did a complete 180. Ichigo's eyes were suddenly his again, bright but distracted, like they were somewhere else and looking through Max, not at her. Nudge had shifted herself in her chair, elbows rested on knees, breathing steadied and bloodied hand lowered, forgotten. Fang had found himself a corner to stand him, a spot shrouded in shadow where he looked perfectly at home.

Slowly the room filled with chatter. It started out slow and grew faster, from quiet to loud as they became more confident in the words they were saying. They exchanged ideas, bouncing them off of one another as they threw away things that wouldn't work, had no hope of doing so, and solidified the others bit by bit until they too ended up in the exponentially growing pile of rejects.

Ichigo settled himself on the ground, on the rough flooring he could feel even through the paper thin rug that smelt vaguely of perfume, to the point at which it almost resembled alcohol, as if a whole bottle of the stuff had been spilled on it at some point. He rested his chin in the palm of his hand, cupped it with long fingers that tapped a sow, unsteady rhythm as he directed his eyes to the grey-ish rug, thinking hard about any and all possibilities.

In a few moments the room had lapsed back into silence before.

But it was a different kind of silence, the sort of silence that was warm, that passed through the room like a relieving zephyr in summer. The silence before was cold, a winter gale that made you shiver but you just couldn't run from.

If only they knew what was happening at that moment in the school they had been unable to save anyone from.

* * *

There were alarms blaring, red lights pulsating, piercing the dust clouded air.

The loud sound of alarms screeching, squealing, and the blinding light actually instilled some hope into the children sat curled in cages.

It was quite sad actually.

Tired eyes, some hardly kept open, several pupils slit like those of a reptile, a few eyes so consumed with darkness there was no distinction by pupil and iris, or iris and white - eyes completely consumed by pupil. A few had irises that bled into strange shapes, one eyes that looked blindly as the other stared in hope, some that didn't know where to look, some that were so bloodshot they looked as if they had never blinked, others leaking yellow-ish liquid from the tear ducts, others still slowly dripping spots of vermilion.

They were hoping the alarm meant disaster and disaster meant escape. They waited in fruitless hope for a few minutes more before the alarm was silenced and a loud clatter cut off the noises of laboured breathing and pained gasping and groaning that had only become audible again for a split second.

Metal screens, even thicker than the impenetrable, many-times-locked doors that already closed off the space filled with tightly compacted cages and dying children, descended from alcoves above the door, covering it and hitting the dusty floor - entirely carpeted in the stuff aside from the occasional carved out footstep.

Groans were accompanied by choked sobs, brought forth from rough, scratchy throats that did not sound like the belonged to these children.

PInk tears splashed on the grey floor.

* * *

Max started to feel disheartened when the clock on the side - ten minutes slow - finally ticked to noon. She was hungry, beginning to feel the emptiness in her stomach that was beginning to consume her after having not eaten in so long, and the silence was echoing, bouncing around in her head inconsiderately.

She could feel the general sense agreement to this unspoken statement that lingered stubbornly about them. Budge had slumped one again, this time in boredom rather than exhaustion, Fang had turned to face the wall rather than them, head lolling to the side as if he had dozed off a little bit at one point, Ichigo's hand had slipped from beneath his chin, he was leaning back on one braced arms one gently moved up and down his pocket. He tugged at the edge of _something._

"What is that?" max asked as her eyes latched onto a minute square of crumpled white material.

"Huh?" She seemed to have pulled him from the depths of his thoughts- she had to wonder how useful they would be to their cause at that moment. "Oh!" he was gaining an understanding "You mean this?" Max had to hold back what she thought might have been a laugh, a near inhuman noise rising from the back of her throat like a bubble, when he cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. He had moved his hand from his pocket to the rug he sat on and she stared at.

The object beneath the slim finger was a different shade of white than the rug, no cleaner but differently stained. There were smudges of various colours across the thin paper envelope he had presented, some dark browns and red she needn't even question the origin of, others almost bright, almost out of place. She didn't know what they were. There might have been ink there once, something comprehensive written across the front, but it was no more than a smudge of grey, uneven, black in places, smeared by unrelenting rainwater.

"From Urahara," it too Max a moment to realise he was talking again and another to notice that the quiet words were directed at her.

"He said to open it only when I had no other option…" He trailed off, distracted by the edge of the sealed part, peeling back due to the worn-down adhesive. Ily, he twisted it between to fingers, carefully tearing at it, pulling it as slow as he could.

"You didn't open it earlier?" Max knew nothing about this Urahara or the contents of the envelope but she believed she had an at least semi accurate rasp of the severity of their earlier situation. She knew she was snapping and didn't feel the least bit sorry for it as she brought herself up onto her feet. If he had opened that envelope then and there he wouldn't have been hurt, Fang wouldn't have been hurt Nudge wouldn't be hurt.

"You don't understand!" He defended, hands flying up in a motion of surrender as the accent on his words grew stronger, focus gone elsewhere, wandering "Urahara is a tricky man - if he tells me not to open something until I have no other option he probably means until one of us is lying inches from death on the floor and the rest of us can't help them. Don't know what's in that envelope, but I do know Urahara - with him it could be anything, it could have been detrimental to us if we used it hen. We just don't know."

Max didn't have the words to respond so she just held her breath and looked straight forwards, like it was a challenge. Ichigo stared back, probably not quite aware of what exactly was happening but unwilling to lose whatever it may be. Eventually max conceded and turned her eyes away.

Her stomach roared and cheeks went red as the entire room turned to stare at her.

"Oh! Can we go out and get some food? Please?" Angel asked, blonde ringlets bouncing on pale shoulders.

Max sent a glance around the room, taking in the spots of blood that had dripped onto the floor and furniture, the injuries of a few of them, especially Nudge, the sudden biting pain in the back of her neck that made her rock forwards, clasping her hands over the area where the pain came from. She grit her teeth and tightly kept her eyes shut until the pain subsided and she could speak clearly again.

"I'm sorry, I don't think we're in any shape to go out right now." But Max could feel the emptiness in her stomach again as it rumbled.

"How about if you give me the money and I'll go out and buy us some food to bring back?"

"You can't go out on your own."

"I'll take Ichigo with me."

"Will you?" Ichigo himself finally brought himself out of his thoughts, looking at Angel with confusion evident on his face. Max was a little taken aback aswell - maybe with the decision Angel had made, but mostly with the speed at which she had made it, as though that had been the plan since the conversation had begun.

"I guess that's okay with me if it's okay with you." max conceded after a moment, looking at Ichigo who had not wiped the confusion from his face and was persistently staring at Angel for an explanation.

She gave him none, but Max could see her face harden, almost agen for a mere moment. Realisation dawned on Ichigo's face and Max found herself left out of the loop, wishing she understood the non-verbal conversation they were having, half tempted to ask - no, demand - they tell her what was happening.

She didn't.

Ichigo agreed and Max wordlessly forfeited him the money and keys, set them a limit they were not to go above, and opened the door for them to pass through. She would ever be able to get over the piercing screech of the protesting hinges.

* * *

It was cold in the streets of Germany so both Ichigo and Angel pulled their jacket tight around themselves, did them up and stuffed their hands into their pockets. There was a sort of drizzly not-quite-rain that hovered in the air, wet their jackets, hair, trousers and faces but didn't fall.

It was dull and grey. Honestly rather fitting.

Angel turned her face upwards, walking with a bounce in her step as she tried to keep up with Ichigo's far longer strides.

"Urahara?" She asked, knowing more than anyone else about what this man might be.

Ichigo sighed but he knew the conversation was inevitable. "Kisuke Urahara," he clarified, tightening his fist tighter around the coins and notes in his pocket "He's a bit crazy.

"Is he like you?"

"He is… sort of - no one is quite like me. But, yeah. I guess."

"Why are you so apprehensive about that envelope?" Angel eyes the corner of it, damp and only getting damper, sticking out of his pocket.

"He's crazy."

"You said. Please elaborate."

"Urahara's ideas work, but they work strangely. He thinks out of the box, so far out he can't see said box. I trust that envelope will get me out of a bad situation I can't find another way out of, but I don't know how he'll do it. I've learnt it's best not to even try to attempt to predict his plans."

"I guess that makes sense." Angel nodded calmly but the idea of Ichigo's world was always a very special one to her - an exciting one that, even though it was dangerous, even more so than hers, she had wished to visit, even if just for a moment.

But she was broken from her thoughts and they were drawn from their intentions when, in the entirely barren streets, they saw something that made Angel's heart feel as though it had stopped.

The alley to their side had been painted red.


End file.
